Getting Closer
by ItTicklesLikeCrazy
Summary: When Dani comes back to town looking for a home, Valerie is the first person she can find that's convenient Val takes her in and somehow manages to convince her Dad that Dani would be a great addition to the family. Dani is close to Val now, and doesn't want to lie to her anymore. With Danny getting closer too, Valerie is bound to figure something out! A challenge from ghostanimal.
1. Back in Town

**Boing, Boing. The plot bunny has arrived. I was checking out ghostanimal's profile and i found a challenge. Surprise, surprise. This WOULD NOT leave me alone, so i had to type. Typed two and a half chapters before i even considered posting. Hope you enjoy.**

**I DON'T NOW, AND PROBABLY NEVER WILL OWN DANNY PHANTOM AND I DON'T REALLY THINK DISCLAIMERS ARE NECESSARY SO THIS WILL BE THE ONLY FOR THIS STORY.**

Bleep-bleep…bleep-bleep…bleep-bleep…bleep-bl—I slammed a finger down on my ghost alarm, muting it, and glanced around quickly. If anybody had noticed the beeping, they didn't show it. I sat alone most days anyway, after breaking up with Danny I didn't have any friends to sit with.

Quietly, I slipped out of the cafeteria, barely pausing to dump the remains of my almost untouched lunch. I pushed through the cafeteria doors and made my way to the girls' restroom. Some cheerleaders, Chrisy and Isabella, were fixing their make-up and gossiping.

When I slipped in they sneered at me and mumbled some not-so-quiet but very rude comments about my Dad's inability to hold his earlier job. My lip twitched and found myself screaming at them in my mind. _It was that stupid ghost dog's fault, not my father's. _

Then I caught myself, ghost BOY'S fault, Phantom's fault, right? Yes, of course, he had ruined my life! A small part of myself nagged, _how is it his fault. Name one thing he's ever DIRECTLY done to ruin you life? He's saved it enough times, never shot directly at you, always protected you from the more dangerous ghosts, let's you chase the Box Ghost instead of catching him because he knows you have anger issues-_

_I do NOT have ANGER ISSUES!_ I protested.

_Yes you do, you're just in denial. Denial that you have anger issues, denial that Phantom's the good guy, denial that without Phantom you'd be a no-longer-smoking pile of ash right now because some ghost would have blasted you to bits and pieces, and denial about how you're not actually a good ghost hunter._

_HEY! All of those are false facts,_ I protested.

_Really, name one bad thing Phantom's done, and don't cut that Mayor garbage of the stealing or damages because you know what an overshadowed person looks like, you know what that staff did, and you know that Phantom doesn't make the damages, the other ghosts do._

_Well…_ I trailed off. For some reason, I couldn't think of something right now. I KNEW that Phantom had done something evil directly; I just had to think of it.

_Good luck with that_, the Voice said in a snide tone.

"HEY, YOU BUTT OUT OF IT!" I exclaimed aloud. Only then did I realize I had yet to slip into a bathroom stall and change into my suit.

Both cheerleaders were staring at me in surprise, but they recovered and whispered, "Freak," before slipping past me and saying something about Paulina. I blinked; I had just lost a conversation with MYSELF. Still, I had yet to think of something evil Phantom had done.

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I touched the device on my wrist. I could worry about my change in morals later; right now I had a ghost to catch. It was with dread that I realized that Phantom would probably be fighting the ghost, and I'd have to decide whether to shoot or not.

The suit wrapped around me and I glanced down at my "watch" hoping not to see the now-familiar ecto-reading. I was absolutely flabbergasted when I did, but didn't at the same time. It was different, but only by a little, and what shocked me the most was that there was only one reading.

Phantom NEVER stopped that little hiding trick of his when there wasn't a ghost. So what was he up to? Was he stopping a robbery or something? No, it was too early in the day for a robbery to be going on, and crime rates had dropped dramatically ever since Phantom had busted the band of big time robbers a few months ago.

Most criminals now feared being caught by the white haired teen, and Phantom's hero vs. villain ratings had never been this high in favor of hero before. A measly 13% of people were still convinced he was evil, and dropping. I feared I was one of the people slowly loosing my grip on the 'Phantom is Evil' policy.

I focused on flying as I sped silently through Casper's halls, finally zooming out of the school into the freedom of the open sky. Not a cloud, or ghost in sight. I was about to speed off in a quick patrol when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I spun, gripping my ecto-gun, but lowered it instantly when I saw who was hovering next to me. I made a little squeaky-gasp sound but quickly covered it up with a cough. "Danielle?" I asked incredulously. This explained the similar ecto-signatures.

Surprising me entirely, the little ghost girl flew at me and collapsed, crying. I tried to soothe the girl, but it was at least five minutes before she stopped sobbing. I held Dani at arm's length, cocking an eyebrow.

Dani wiped furiously at her left eye, drying the remainders of her tears away. "Sorry Val," she apologized. "I can't find Danny anywhere, and even if I could, he couldn't help me without me feeling guilty forever."

"What's wrong?" I questioned. I knew Dani was a strong girl, like myself, and it would take an awful lot to upset her. I hadn't cried since I'd learned Dad had been fired, and my spirit had strengthened a lot since then.

"W-well, since we last parted, I've been feeling really…hollow inside every time I see a family. And I keep sneaking into schools to learn more. I may not be high school level yet, and I may be only two years old -mentally- but the growth serum Vl-Plasmius gave me made it so I'll keep learning things at an accelerated rate until my knowledge fits, or something like that. I don't exactly understand, but I'm sure I could pass as a dumb freshman if I tried, and I was…I was wondering…"

"What?" I asked. "You make it sound like you want to stay with me?"

"Could I?" Dani finally burst. Fresh hope shone in her eyes and she hovered with her hands clenched together. I had always wanted a little sister, and Dani's puppy dog eyes were irresistible.

"I'll talk to my Dad after school, we could see if we could get you enrolled in Casper, OK?"

"REALLY?!" Dani's excited reply exploded across the city with the loudness factor only a little girl could produce. She threw her arms around my neck energetically, then flew in loop-de-loops. I smiled at her antics, but something Dani had said struck me.

Growth serum, why would Vlad give her growth serum? She said she was Phantom's cousin, so she was probably related to him when she died, or half-died. But if she were growing like a normal human girl, why would she need growth serum. And why in the world were there two "halfas". How had that happened? Originally, I thought it was freaky, but now I considered them humans, simply with ghost powers. Just like humans, with the need to eat, sleep, and go to the lavatory, except with ghost powers and forms.

"Dani, I have to get back to school, but this question has been bugging me for a while."

Dani stopped in her flying around long enough to look at me with big, innocent green eyes. "Yes?" she wondered.

"How many halfas are there, I don't want to go hurting any humans."

To my surprise, Dani giggled. Soon, it broke out into an all out laugh. After three minutes, I coughed and said dryly, "Done yet?"

Dani choked back another laugh and looked up to me with slightly watery eyes. "Sorry Val, there are three halfas. One, I wouldn't mind you hurting."

"Vlad?" I guessed. I had decided long ago it would be safe to tell Dani that I knew about Vlad.

Dani's green eyes bugged out, "You KNOW about VLAD? B-but how?"

"After I let Phantom fly off with you, I flew back to check on Vlad, who I had accidentally left in his mansion with an evil ghost –oops—and saw him absorb the duplicate and transform. Let's just say we haven't been on the friendliest of terms, but he doesn't know I know. Why were you laughing though? What's funny about there being three halfas?"

"That's not the funny part. It's kinda the prospect of thinking how you could actually hurt the third. I was only able to hurt him because he refused to blast me, no matter what. If he was trying, and pure evil, he could probably kill you instantly, or beat you within and inch of your life. Of course, -…" Dani paused with her mouth part way open. I knew she had been about to say a name. "…He isn't like that," she finished weakly.

"Really? Have I ever battled him?" I questioned.

Dani crossed her arms over her chest with what I recognized as a stubborn look on her face. "Val, I love you, but I really want to keep his identity a secret. If I whispered his secret to a loaf of bread, it would grow legs, arms, and a mouth just so it could tell people the secret. It's kinda something that would affect the entire world."

"Okay, first off, I won't pry if you don't want me to, okay?" Dani nodded, frown dissipating. "And second, how much sugar have you had today? A loaf of BREAD would grow legs, arms, and a mouth?"

Dani smiled innocently at this. "That is classified information, now shoo your butt back to school before you're late. I don't want detention holding you up because I want to get enrolled as soon as possible."

I put my hands up innocently and zoomed back to solid ground, letting the suit wrap back to where ever it went. Dani came with her and let a bright white ring for around her. In a second or two she was back to normal, and her feet landed softly on the ground.

"Why are you changing back to human, Dani?" I asked.

"Danny could be back any second now, and I don't want to trip up his ghost sense until after school. So I'll wait here like a human." I nodded in understanding, and turned to head back to class. I only had ten minutes before I was late.

"And Val," Dani called after me. "I don't mind being called Danielle so much anymore."


	2. Negotiation

**Second Chapter: Nothing really to say here, other than i'm sick. :(. On the upside, sickness, among other things, is one of the things that hits writer's block on the head for things several times, at least for me.**

I turned away from Dani with a smile tugging at my lips. I ran inside and picked up everything from my locker. I got to my class about a minute before the bell rang. When the teacher came in and sat down at the desk, he picked up the roll sheet.

"Fenton, Daniel." There was no reply. The teacher sighed, "Alright, abse-"

"PRESENT!" Danny skid into class and literally tumbled into his desk beside Sam and Tucker, right in front of me.

"Okay," the teacher let loose another exasperated sigh. "Detention with Mr. Lancer today."

Danny nodded and I barely heard Sam whisper, "Where were you?"

"Japan," was Danny's soft reply. If I didn't know he had to be kidding, I'd say he was serious. His facial expression certainly said that, but detention might have done that.

"Danny…out of town…are taking… ever consider…little break… these trips?" I only caught a little of Sam's mumbled remark, but I saw defiance flash across Danny's features and he stubbornly shook his head.

Sam gave him a hopeless look, "Danny, you…to class anymore…to stop…selfless…matter too."

"Really, do I matter more than all of those innocent people?" Danny whispered back fiercely.

"What about college?" Sam asked back. "I thought you always wanted to be an astronaut. It's next year and the year after the space program looks at. A C- student is NOT going to cut it. And even if you somehow make it to space, you can't just fly back down anytime you want."

"Well, maybe there are more important things. I can't turn my back on these people, even if it means I turn my back on my own selfish desires. I…I just can't."

Sam gave him one last, long look, then turned to face the teacher. Danny put a hand to his temple and rubbed his head vigorously. I wondered for the rest of the school day what Danny had meant by that, and why Sam hadn't even cracked a tiny smile at the Japan joke. She was a goth, but she did have a bit of a sense of humor, especially when it came to Danny.

When the final school bell rang, I had to struggle against the crowd of students to even get to my locker. I dumped everything either at the bottom of my already messy locker, or in my backpack. I slung it over my shoulder and started making my way down the hall.

I saw Danny slumped over and walking slowly to detention. Sam and Tucker stood at the end of the hall. Sam was muttering loudly about something. I couldn't make out the words, but I knew she was upset. I might have walked over to them, but Dani rose in my thoughts.

I hurried out of school and went back to where I had left her. "Dani?" I whispered loudly.

She popped up from behind an alley a couple yards away. "Why didn't you just go invisible?" I couldn't help but wonder.

Dani looked down at her right hand and clenched it. "I don't know, ever since I was stabilized I haven't been able to use any of my powers in human form. I'll never be as powerful as Danny, but that's to be expected. I'm only a little carbon copy of the real deal."

"Carbon copy?" I asked, but then it struck me. Growth serum, the strange, eerie similarity to the real Phantom, all the slip-ups when I thought they were saying cousin. "Dani," I almost hated to ask. "Are you a…a clone?"

She looked up at me with watery blue eyes and nodded her head, shrinking away from me. "Does that mean you don't want to see me anymore?" she asked timidly. I felt a surge of pity for the girl and without warning, I, Valerie Grey, a Sophomore of Casper high, ghost hunter of Amity Park, swept her up in a ferocious hug.

Dani stiffened, then let herself relax into the hug. When I pulled away, I saw a bright smile written clearly across her face. Still, a thought tugged at the back of my mind. "Dani, I'd accept you no matter what, but I have to ask, if you're a clone of Phantom, how'd you become a halfa?"

Panic flashed in the back of her eyes for a moment, but then it was gone. "Well…I wasn't exactly a clone of Phantom completely. I only got half his DNA, the other is from a pure, 100% human. But that doesn't matter; right now we're going to go talk to your Dad, right?"

I knew she was trying to change the subject from who she had gotten DNA from Phantom, but I had said I wouldn't be pushy. Maybe I'd ask later, or maybe she might tell me.

"Come on!" she grabbed my arm and dragged me into the air as she jumped and transformed midair. I barely had time to activate my suit before an eccentric ghost girl was rapidly dragging me around town. Eventually, she slowed, "Valerie, where do you live?"

I laughed and slowly led her to the run down apartment building where our tiny apartment lay. In an abandoned alley near it, I de-suited and Dani transformed. She followed me up to the apartment and waited patiently when I unlocked the door and let us in.

Dad was sitting at the table looking bleary-eyed. He had quickly gotten two promotions since the ghost dog, but still worked night shifts. It was early morning for him, but he was still up to greet me when I got home from school.

Without ceremony, Dani popped out from behind me and asked, "Is that your Dad? I like his mustache, it's cool."

Dad blinked, confused. "Valerie, who else is with you, I haven't seen her before."

"Dad," I felt cautious, as I should, considering I was about to ask my dad if he could adopt a complete stranger. "This is-"

"Danielle," Dani interrupted. She knew I was about to say Dani, but she liked being called Dani, didn't she? "I go by Dani most of the time, but my name is Danielle."

Dad smiled at her, "Well, hello there, Danielle. It's nice to meet you."

"Dad," I interrupted before he and Dani could go on. May as well just ask now. "Danielle," it was weird calling her by her real name. "Danielle is kind of homeless, but she's been my friend for a while now, and I… Iwaswonderingifwecouldadopther?"

Dad was used to me rushing sentences by now, with all the times I had no excuse for ghost hunting. "Valerie, I barely know this girl, and you know I really don't have the money to support a second child-"

"I know where to get food any time I need, no stealing involved," Dani offered. There were the puppy dog eyes again.

"Where will she sleep?" Dad asked.

"My room," I offered. "I'll pay for her myself if I need to."

"And how will you do that, you're already working two jobs," Dad persisted.

Suddenly, I knew what I had to do, but it was worth it for Dani. "Dad, if you take Dani in, I'll…I'll give up ghost hunting."

No sooner were the words out of my mouth then Dani screamed, "NO! I won't let you do that; I'd rather go back to the streets. This is one of the reasons I couldn't go to Danny, he'd be too busy worrying about me to do anything, and he'd have to make a huge sacrifice! I can't let you do this!"

Dad was now very confused. "Danny who?" he wondered.

"Danny Phantom, her cousin," I answered, then froze. Dani stopped in her wild rant long enough to turn to Dad in horror, mouth open wide.

Dad's eyebrows shot up, and something miraculous happened. He tilted his head back and began to laugh. After a while, both Dani and me asked, "What's so funny?"

Dad stopped laughing long enough to reply. "Valerie would not only hang around, but give up ghost hunting for the ghost she despises' cousin, but said cousin would refuse to let her give up ghost hunting? I think I need a little bit more of an explanation here. Have you finally seen past your poorly assembled defenses, and seen Phantom for the hero he is?"

"Yes…I mean no, I mean…ugh, I don't know yet, but Danielle isn't like him, she's just trying to survive. I was gone a month or so back for 36 hours or so, remember?" He nodded. "Good, well I had gotten an assignment from Vlad," Dani shuddered, "and he told me to capture Danielle here. So I did, and I found out she's something called a halfa, which is pretty much a human with ghost powers."

"What?" Dad interrupted. Without a word Dani transformed twice, once to ghost form, once to go back to human.

"Anyway," I continued, "So I captured Dani and she said she was Phantom's cousin, so I used her as bait to get both her and Phantom, and handed Dani over to Vlad. But Vlad is also a halfa, but evil, and he tried to melt Dani down into ectoplasm. Phantom managed to convince me that Vlad was evil and we went and rescued Dani just in time, and stabilized her. But after I let both of them go, I flew back down to check on Vlad and saw him transform into his evil ghost half.

"Today Dani showed up during lunch looking for Phantom. She said that she couldn't find him and would feel guilty forever asking to stay with him, so she asked if she could stay with me. After school we came and asked you and now we're up to the present."

Dad thoughtfully stroked at his mustache and drank his coffee. Dani and I waited patiently, and after a few minutes, he spoke. "Okay, I've decided, with the unique circumstances, that Danielle can stay, under a few conditions." Dani perked up, but was listening carefully. "Valerie, I won't make you give up ghost hunting, but I want that D+ in French to improve. I'll set your curfew later too, but you WILL be home on time, or you get grounded and you don't get to ghost hunt during the period of time you're grounded."

Dani had a very happy smile on her face. Dad continued, "Dani, you'll share Valerie's room until we get better living conditions. I'm sure we'll be able to feed you sufficiently, as long as you like ramen noodles."

Dani's smile widened, "When living on the street, you learn not to be too picky. You can ask all those questions now, Mr. Grey, I won't mind."

Dad looked a little surprised, but recovered quickly. "How are you a halfa if you're Phantom's cousin?"

I winced, but Dani just smiled more. "I'm half Phantom's clone, half a clone of a 100% human. Technically, I'm not a true halfa, but since there are only two others, I count. Technically, I'm only two, but I could probably pass as a slow freshman. And yes, I do want to be enrolled in school, Casper, preferably. No, I don't fight ghosts like Danny Phantom, but I do associate with him often."

"How?" Both Dad and I were confused on how she knew all of the questions we wanted.

"I've imagined this conversation ever since I flew off dramatically the first time, just with other people. It's been a little more than a year since then, that would be around sixteen months since Danny beat the lunch lady to a pulp, just in case you were wondering."

I remembered that, with the freak meat incident. I still didn't believe in ghosts back then. Now everybody in the entire world believed in ghosts, with Amity being broadcasted and Phantom making all of those out-of-town trips now. For some reason some ghosts were able to slip under his notice and out of Amity and get to other countries. Well, maybe most of the world, some people just refused to see the truth, kinda like me with the whole "it was his dog, and his fault" thing.

"Valerie, why don't you get Dani settled in? I'll deal with the enrollment and adoption legal issues. Considering you don't have a birth certificate, this could certainly be easier than regular adoption." I nodded at Dad and went to find a sleeping bag for Dani until I could get her something better to sleep on.

Dani's reaction to my room was expected. She insisted on getting rid of all my Phantom hate objects, like the dartboard, but let me keep the newspaper clippings, as long as she could read them. She insisted on completely rearranging my room and moved all the furniture so that we each had a side to ourselves, but our beds were close to the middle, so we could talk before bed and stuff. I went to sleep feeling a lot happier than I had in a while.

**Hey, sorry if Mr. Grey gave in too easily, i was getting tired of typing resistance. Review if you please, but can i have a little constructive criticism if you're gonna throw criticism. I don't cope well when people are just like "****this story sucks".**** I can deal with, "****this story sucks because blah blah blah..."**** yeah, but you have to give a reason if you're gonna insult me. That way i can fix the suckiness.**


	3. A Little Messy

**Chapter Three: two minutes of the story being up and the third chapters going up.**

"Dani, time for school!" I exclaimed. Her blue eyes snapped open immediately and she bounced up. She was already in her school clothes, and she inhaled the breakfast I had set out for her. Snagging her already packed backpack full of school supplies, paid for by me, she grabbed my wrist and dragged me outside, calling a, "BYE DAD!" behind her.

She dragged me all the way to the abandoned alley I normally used and transformed. Impatiently, she tapped her foot while I awkwardly used the hand it was on to touch the "watch" because she had a death grip on the other. As soon as I got the suit around me she dragged me into the air. I didn't even have to use the hover board.

We landed at school and she again waited for my to deactivate my suit before dragging me into school. I now understood what Phantom had felt like when we were handcuffed and he was paralyzed. Dani dragged me to the office and shrieked at the office lady, "DANIELLE GREY!"

The poor secretary looked flustered, but picked up a manila folder and handed it to Dani. Dani immediately dropped me to the floor and dug through the folder, picking out her locker number and schedule. "BYE VAL!" she screeched before dashing off in search of her locker.

As I picked myself up off the floor I saw her crash into a junior boy, apologize, and take off running even faster. The secretary gave me a sympathetic look as I rubbed my wrist. I smiled back at her and made my way to my first period.

Lunch came faster than I imagined, and since Sophomores and Freshman lunched together, as well as Juniors and Seniors, I was met with a very excited Dani outside the doors.

"Hi Val, come on, I'm hungry!" She made to grab my wrist but I managed to avoid her hand.

"Dani, I've had my shoulder jerked on enough today. We can walk like people right now, okay?" She nodded and burst through the doors, bouncing happily into the lunch line. She grabbed a hamburger, an apple, and some milk and followed me to my regular table. For some reason I couldn't understand, she seemed to be looking for someone in the crowd of students. She didn't seem to find them either.

When she finished she got up and was about to dumb her tray in the garbage, when she slipped and set the contents of her tray soaring into somebody. Unfortunately, said person was Paulina.

For a moment, everything was quiet, and then Paulina let out a yowl like an angry moose. "Dash!" she cried angrily, pointing one perfectly manicured finger at Dani. When the blonde jock stood up, cracking his knuckles, I knew exactly what was going to happen. Sadly, I was too far away to stop it and I could only hope Dani could take a punch.

I closed my eyes ands waited for the cry of pain, but it never came. Instead, there was a loud SLAP sound, and then a crash and a thud. I opened my eyes and saw one of the most unlikely sights ever. Danny Fenton was standing protectively in front of Dani with his hand out. Dash was sprawled out before him on the floor, covered in the remains of the other A-lister's lunches.

Slowly, Danny grabbed Dash by the collar of the black shirt he wore underneath that stupid letterman jacket. Danny, still carrying Dash by the collar, pushed him up against the wall, and growled; "You will NEVER lay a finger on her AGAIN! UNDERSTAND?" There was a fire in his icy blue eyes I'd never seen before. I think, for the first time in my life, I was actually seeing Danny Fenton mad. I would hate to be the target of that.

Dash's eyes were wide, along with every one else's'. Still, he had a reputation to uphold, so as soon as Danny set him down, he picked Danny up by the collar. "What's stopping me, Fen-toad? You? Please, you couldn't hurt a fly if you were trying."

He tossed Danny aside and stepped forward to Danielle. He grabbed her by the neck and raised a fist. Surprising me even more, Danny was suddenly there, grabbing the fist before it made contact with Dani.

"Now how is this familiar?" Danny mused. "Oh yeah, it just happened a minute ago when you tried to deck her the first time. Then, I pushed you to the floor, like this," Danny twisted Dash's wrist down and thrust forward. Dash lost his balance and began to fall. Quick as lightning, Danny grabbed his other wrist and wrenched Dani free. He set her down calmly, and stepped forward, pinning Dash to the ground.

"You do not hurt her, nobody does, got it?" he asked calmly. Dash nodded and Danny got up, brushed some imaginary dust off his jeans, and walked out of the cafeteria, leaving everybody staring.

Finally, I woke up from my shock-induced trance and hurried over to Dani. "Danielle, are you okay?" I asked. She turned to me with watery blue eyes that, for some reason, now looked familiar, and hugged me. I hugged her back, still in shock from what I had seen.

Everybody else seemed to be waking up now. Mouths were closing, eyes were blinking, and one very angry cheerleader was frantically scrubbing milk out of her pink crop-top. Dash had gotten up and was muttering to himself on how, "Fenturd will PAY for that!"

I knew he might turn on Dani if he saw her, so it was my turn to grab her wrist and rag her. I pulled her out of the cafeteria and into the hall, not even caring for the lunches I left behind. In the hallway, I let go of her just in time to see Danny Fenton casually lean against a locker at the end of the hall.

"Danny!" Dani called out and started sprinting down the hall. She tackled Danny, but he sidestepped the last minute and grabbed her arm to keep her from falling. She bounced back up and threw her arms around his neck. Danny had to put a hand out against the lockers to steady himself from falling.

"Hey Princess," he greeted her. "I wasn't expecting to see you here, at school, with Val, without me knowing."

"Hey!" Dani protested. "I tried to contact you, but you were never where you were supposed to be, and I couldn't come into school because Val's alarm would go off. Did you know that her Dad is legally adopting me?"

Danny's mouth dropped open, "What?" he squeaked. "I mean, you can always stay with me you know, you're family."

"Wait," I blurted out. "How is Danielle family to you, she's a clone of Phantom and some random human."

Both of them froze with terrified expressions on their faces, identical blue eyes wide. Then it hit my like a bus driver hitting the breaks when an old lady is on a crosswalk right in front of them. (How much sugar have I had today?)

"Wait, Danny is the human, isn't he?" I asked, already knowing the answer. Two black-haired heads nodded in unison, and I saw a flicker of relief in Danny's eyes.

"What is the chance that both DNA donors are named Danny?" I asked jokingly. Danny froze again, but quickly let loose a laugh and shrugged. "So what was THAT back there?" I asked.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Danny replied calmly.

"You know, the cafeteria thing? I had no idea you knew how to do that!" I exclaimed.

Danny shrugged, "Overprotective big brother symptom, I guess. I don't really remember what I did."

"Well, you left Dash screaming for vengeance after you embarrassed him in front of the entire school for 'touching' Dani." Danny winced at that.

"Just what I need, another angry A-lister out for blood," Danny said.

Danielle giggled happily. "That's the best part about being Danielle Grey, after a couple days I managed to convince Valerie to stop hunting Phantom." You could practically hear the thud as Danny's jaw hit the floor.

"Really?" he squeaked out. Dani nodded happily and Danny swept her up and spun her around and around in a huge hug. "I love you for that, Dani, I really do. Of course, I loved you before, but your just a little miracle worker!"

I smiled at the display of affection, but frowned when I realized what it meant. Danny Fenton had known I was the Red Huntress. I didn't know for how long, but apparently it was long enough for him to get used to the idea. Had Dani told him? Probably, and that meant he'd only known for about a month.

As soon as Danny set the other Dani down, I asked. "So how long have you known?"

**Hope you enjoyed. Ciao!**


	4. Some Kicking Action

**Another Chapter. I am just pouring them out, and I;m typing one a possible short story that is Danny and Valerie as the main characters too. I'm proud of me!**

As soon as Danny set the other Dani down, I asked. "So how long have you known?"

Let's just say, when Sam saw me and Danny chatting after school, she wasn't happy. She had stormed over to us and forcefully put herself in between Danny and me. Danny had her softly smiling in a few minutes, but she still left frowning when Danny said he was going to spend the rest of the day with me. He didn't mention Dani to her, which made me a little curious, because he shared everything with her and Tucker, but I let it be.

"Why didn't you tell me you knew I was the Red Huntress?" I asked.

Danny looked over at me in shock. "You have an alias? There's a name for that mysterious masked figure? Why did I not know this?"

I grinned at him, "It's just what I call myself, I don't exactly shout it out. Answer the question."

"Okay, okay." He put his hands up in what was supposed to be an innocent gesture. I cracked a smile. It felt good to be hanging out with him again. He dropped his hands, "Ever since the beginning."

"You knew all along?" I was surprised, honestly, why hadn't he said anything?

"Yeah," he replied, a dark shadow flickering in the back of his bright blue eyes before disappearing so fast I though for sure it was my imagination. "When you were first chasing Phantom, Sam and I were watching, and when you started to come near us, following Phantom, she didn't want to look suspicious so she pulled me into a fake-out make-out." I almost winced at the painful memory. "And you said something like, 'ugh, loser love' and flew away. Then Sam was like, 'That sounded like Valerie!'

"After a while, with the constant disappearances and all the references and stuff, I figured it out, and shared it with Sam and Tuck. We were already friends with Phantom then," I opened my mouth to protest but he shot me a look that made me shut it, "and before you say anything, I know he's good. I have some very good evidence, and you agreed not to hunt him anymore because of Dani, right?"

"Yeah…continue," I consented.

"So anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, we were already friends with Phantom and he confirmed it for us by giving some of his own facts and stuff. So when I said I knew all about your job with the flour sack thing I didn't mean the Nasty Burger thing, I meant the ghost hunting. And I'm sorry for being such a jerk then."

I smiled at him, "Please Danny, don't apologize. When I was an A-List crony, I was a major jerk. I actually commanded a jock to hurt you just for ruining my shirt. And, just out of curiosity, do you know why I, umm… stopped out last relationship."

A small smile graced Danny's lips, like the situation would be funny if he wasn't the one involved. "Yeah," he nodded. "Protecting Danny from Danny, confusing huh?"

At first I was confused at what he said, but remembered that Phantom also went by Danny. "Hey, that's a weird coincidence!" I remarked.

Danny winced at that, but his face soon turned to a slightly relieved expression before turning back to casual. He would be a good poker player if he could hide stuff like that without the first reaction.

"Yeah, not so much of a coincidence. You know how he was first known as Inviso-Bill?"

I laughed, and soon Danny joined in. "Well, he thought that was stupid, and for a good reason too. He came up with Phantom, with is a much better pun once you know the whole deal, and needed a first name just incase they made up something stupid for his first name. He had just met me then, and so he used my name."

"Oh, well, I'll always call you Danny, and him Phantom. I don't think I can call him Danny, that's you."

To my shock, Danny doubled over in laughter and it took a couple minutes for him to get it under control. He looked up at me with a huge smile stretching from one side of his face to the other, but when I opened my mouth to ask, he waved a hand dismissively.

"Inside joke," he excused. Then stiffened. I watched in amazement as a tiny blue wisp forced it's way out of his mouth, and I could actually see it. But, it was really warm today? He locked those gorgeous blue orbs on my eyes and said with a very serious tone, "Val, I have to run. Make sure Dani's okay. Now!"

His voice carried authority, something I have never experienced from him except that time everyone's' parents were kidnapped. Then he literally started sprinting full tilt away from me. He ducked behind a picnic table once he had gotten far enough away, and I saw a flash of light. Maybe he was activating an invention.

I felt movement on my wrist, and glanced down. My ghost sensor was going crazy, four ghosts in the park. One of them had a very low level of power: 2.8. I knew that one was Danielle, in human form. The second was 2.3, which was either an animal ghost, a blob, or the Box Ghost.

"BEWARE!" I heard in the distance. I'd bet it was the Box Ghost. The third ghost was a 6.7, which was pretty vague. The forth was VERY recognizable, as Phantom. He had been at 8.9 for a while now, but he was slowly increasing in power. In a couple years he might be a 10.0, equal to Pariah Dark.

"Hey Boxy!" I heard Phantom's familiar voice penetrate my thoughts. "Mind telling me how you get out of the ghost zone every fifteen minutes? What is this, the fourteenth time today? You know, as much as you guys try to prevent it, I DO have a life you know."

I suddenly remembered Danny's request, and hurried to where it said Dani was. She was watching Phantom suck the Box Ghost into the thermos he always had with him. Dani cheered, but was quickly cut short when a big, chunky, streak of silver came and snatched her.

"Put her down, Skulker!" Phantom commanded, reminding me strangle of Danny's earlier tone.

The big, metal ghost was clutching Dani by the windpipe, and her face was turning pink. "Not a chance, ghost child, if I deliver this prize to Plasmius he'll reward me heavily with unlimited acess to his portal. That means I can come after you any time I want!"

"No!" A cry exploded out of my throat, and without thinking, I leapt up at the ghost, without even activating my suit. This surprised him, and I managed to wrestle Dani from his grip before he threw me off. I flew at a speed towards a tree that would certainly kill me when I made contact.

Phantom scooped Dani up off the ground and tucked her onto his back before taking off after me. He came around from behind my so that my back was pressed forcefully into his chest. His strong arms wrapped around my stomach and held me fast before quickly landing on the ground and setting me down. He seemed eager to not be in contact with me. This, for some reason, made me grateful and strangely upset at the same time.

He grabbed Dani off his back, where she was clinging like a baby koala, and set her down next to me. "Stay here. I don't want you to get hurt." This seemed aimed at both of us, not just Dani. I ignored this order automatically

Phantom took off, each of his hands glowing bright green. He shot four ecto-blasts at Skulker, two from each hand. Skulker dodged two of them, but the next two slammed him back until he hit a tree. The metal ghost quickly recuperated and shot some strange looking rockets at Phantom. Phantom tried to dodge, but the rockets followed him close. I quickly realized they were ecto-seeking missiles, and that meant that Phantom would be busy for a while.

"Hey metal head!" I screamed, just because witty banter always seemed to help Phantom The ghost turned toward me just in time to get an ecto-blast to the face. I was shocked when his head fell off, and a tiny little blob, about ten centimeters tall fell out.

I turned to Dani to ask her if she knew what had just happened, but I saw her giggling. "Oh yeah, I totally forgot, Danny told me about you. He said that secretly, under all that buff-looking armor, Skulker was just a tiny little blob with a high squeaky voice."

She stepped forward and grabbed the blob around the middle with one hand. One problem, she picked it up upside-down.

"Unhand me at once! I am the Ghost Zone's Greatest Hunter! You will all fear me!" Dani and I looked at each other, then burst out laughing.

"This is the ghost that handcuffed me to Phantom? But, he's, he's puny!" I stated between peals of laughter.

"I'll have your head for that, Huntress!" Skulker screamed.

"Fat Chance, pipsqueak!" a very familiar voice called from behind me. A blue beam came from behind both Dani and me and sucked both Skulker and his suit away. I turned to see Danny Fenton standing there, holding out a thermos. He capped it and put it away, then rushed up to Dani and knelt next to her.

"Dani, your neck!" he exclaimed, touching said area. I could see very faint purple marks forming there from Skulker strangling her. "Are you alright? Oh, I'll kill him for this!" Without another word, he started shaking the thermos up and down violently.

There was a faint scream from inside, along with the Box Ghost's indignant, "Hey, I am in here too!"

"Hey, hey, hey!" Dani caught his wrist and pried the thermos from him. "I'm fine! I'm a big girl, only two year younger than you. I can handle myself. No need to punish the poor Box Ghost, no matter how annoying. Why are YOU here?" There was a strange emphasis on you, like a different him was supposed to be there.

Danny opened his mouth to respond, but before he could I heard an expressionless female voice announce, "Target found." Danny's eyes went wide and he grabbed Dani's hand in his left hand and mine in his right. He tossed us both away from him and began sprinting in the other direction.

"Danny?" I asked, confused. Then a second later I saw them. Three rocket-like missiles were diving safe for Danny. I barely had time to draw in a sharp breath before the reached him, blowing both him and the ground around him sky high.

"Danny!" I screamed. Oh, where was Phantom when you needed him. I would have given anything for him to be there to save Danny, but he hadn't been. And now sweet, clumsy, clueless, kind, Danny Fenton was gone.

**Hope you enjoyed, and don't be too mad for the cliffy, we all know that Danny didn't really just die. Or did he? Mwahahaha-*choke*. NO! He didn't i can't be that mean. Still, until next time.**


	5. Meatloaf

**HEY! It's been a while hasn't it? I've been reading FanFiction and dealing with school. My lowest grade is a B+, but it's in science and that makes me kind of nervous 'cause normally my worst grade is in Gym. I'm actually averagely fit, and I swim on a normal basis, I just have a horrible immune system and my Gym grade depends entirely on attendance and whether you have your gym clothes every day. So, I've been trying to pull up my science grade but since what's really affecting it is those dang tests I can't so anything until the next one. I'm planning on studying like crazy the next time one comes up. This weekend I managed to type two chapters in an hour or so! Enjoy!**

I felt tears form at the corners of my eyes and I fell to my knees in despair. Dani was staring at the burnt spot where the missiles had hit in disbelief. "Well," a voice said from behind me. "That was certainly exciting."

I wheeled around to snap at whoever had just mocked Danny's death, and I saw…Danny. He was standing casually with his arms crossed, smirking slightly at my shocked expression.

"Val, if you're going to hang around me, you should know that it's very hard to kill me," he stated. I stepped forward gently, and then pulled him into a hug. He stiffened, then relaxed, and soon turned to laughter as Dani tackled both of us and squirmed herself into the hug.

After I was done hugging him, I stepped back, looked him square in the eye, and slapped him as hard as I could. I was expecting him to double over, cry out in pain, curse, roll on the floor, and then pop back up trying to preserve his dignity like most guys who get slapped by me, but he didn't even wince. He just rubbed his cheek, which now sported a very impressive red mark, and mumbled, "I suppose I should have expected that. I'm so used to Sam I think its hug or slap, not hug and slap."

"Sorry to interrupt, and as much as I enjoy seeing Danny get beat up, but I think you need to handle the thermos. How many ghosts are in this thing?" Dani wondered.

"Eh, thirteen, only three speaking, though. It's been a few hours since I emptied it." Danny replied. My jaw dropped, because that was more than I encountered in two weeks, not counting Phantom.

"How in the world did you encounter thirteen ghosts in a few hours?" I wondered aloud. Both Danny and Dani froze and looked at me anxiously.

Danny laughed nervously. "I-um…er- what?"

I knew he wasn't going to tell me the truth so I said, "Oh, never mind. That's Phantom's thermos, right?"

I was expecting him to take the easy way out and nod. That's why I said it, but instead he froze again. "Why do you think I would have Phantom's thermos?"

Now I was really confused, but I needed to respond. I shrugged at him and checked my watch. 5:41 blinked up at me. I had to get home and finish my homework, and help Dani with hers.

"Hey, listen Danny," I interrupted his fast thinking for a lie. Something was up. "I have to go, homework and stuff, see you 'round?"

"Sure," he nodded thankfully, sent Dani a meaningful glance, and walked away. I stared after him, trying to figure out what he was hiding, but a very anxious Dani yanking once again at my arm as she turned into her ghost form and flew me to our apartment interrupted my thought process. This again, I thought we were done with this.

She phased us directly into our room and changed back to human. "Dad, we're home!" I called. A minute later Dad stuck his head in and nodded at us.

"Dinner will be ready soon. I thought we should get something special to celebrate Danielle's first day of high school and officially invite her into the family."

Dani blinked at him when he said that, then smiled broadly and squeezed the life out of him in a vicious hug. "Yes! Yes! Yes! Thanks a ton, Da- Mr. Grey."

Dad smiled warmly at Dani during the last part. "You can call me Dad or Daemon, if you want." Dani's smile was so wide I was sure she was going to break her face in two. "And, maybe this weekend we can do something for family bonding, and you can invite somebody along." I knew this statement was directed at Dani, I really didn't have any real friends besides Dani and Danny.

"Danny," Dani said immediately. Dad's expression turned to slight confusion.

"She means Danny Fenton, apparently she's a clone mix between Danny Fenton and Phantom," I explained. Dad's lips quirked, and I knew he was holding back laughter at the irony of the situation.

"So can I invite Danny?" Dani asked, blinking innocently up at Dad. He smiled and nodded. Dani squealed excitedly. "What would we be doing?" she wondered.

"We might rent a paddle boat and take it out to the lake. Go fishing or swimming, stuff like that." I didn't know it was possible to smile as widely as Dani was and not be going through extreme muscle pain. I was proven wrong.

"Great! Danny loves swimming! I haven't had time to learn yet, but I bet he'll teach me. Plus, it's like impossible for me to drown, so it'll be fun! Danny likes fishing too, I think. He's done it with his Dad before, and he mentioned that that was an 'experience to never be forgotten' so I think he likes it. Since it's Wednesday today, I only have to wait for two days. This is going to be so fun!" her excitement was interrupted by a loud growl from her stomach. I was suddenly reminded of how little lunch I got.

"What's for dinner?" I asked Dad. He gave me a mysterious, mustached smile and led us into the kitchen. I was surprised when I saw a meatloaf, like a real meatloaf, sitting on the kitchen table. It'd been a while since Dad had made anything, and as I remembered, his cooking sucked.

Dani sat down in her chair and quickly took up the plastic utensils provided. Every since she'd moved in with us we'd had cheap 90 second microwave meals or ramen noodles. She'd assured us that this was perfectly fine and much better than what she'd gotten living on the streets, but I still felt a little guilty. After learning what I had today, she could have moved in with the Fentons and gotten much better meals, albeit some of them may have come alive. Instead, she'd come to me.

Dad cut us each a slice of meatloaf, and Dani eagerly dug in. I picked at it nervously, remembering the last time I ate Dad's cooking. "I actually bought it pre-made, and then warmed it up in the oven," he told me. I dug in, and it was delicious. It was nice to have a family meal again, and that was just what Dani was, family.

That night, Dani curled up on her makeshift bed in an old, oversized Dumpy Humpy t-shirt and some worn pajama pants. She had taken her hair out of its normal ponytail and her little red hat was on the floor next to the clothes she normally wore.

"Valerie?" she asked in a slightly sleepy voice.

"Yeah," I replied.

"Tell me a story," she requested.

"What kind of story?" I asked, flipping over on my own mattress.

"How about why you don't like Danny?"

"I lo-like Danny fine," I stuttered. Pictures of Danny flooded my head, but I pushed them down. For some reason, a couple pictures of Phantom had accompanied the images.

Dani paid no heed to my slip up. "Wrong Danny, I mean the ghost one. Danny Phantom," she corrected.

"Oh, well, I thought he ruined my life."

"Thought? As in past tense?" she questioned.

"Well, I guess I'm considering that it wasn't his fault," I admitted.

"FINALLY!" she exclaimed. "Why, though? You never believed him before."

I winced. "Well, he keeps insisting it wasn't his dog, and I think that it's possible Vlad manipulated me enough so that I didn't see it like that. I really regret being his little puppet. All I did was get in the way and do Vlad's dirty work." I felt disgust of myself rise in me. "I guess that I was just looking for something to blame for my friends being jerks and me having bad judgment, and Phantom was the closest thing I could find. I really screwed up bad when I trusted Vlad."

"Hey," Dani interrupted me. "Don't blame yourself too bad. You know, I trusted Vlad and even called him father at first. I attacked Danny-Phantom- without mercy even though he refused to do anything but small self-defense because I was melting before his eyes as I used my powers. He managed to convince me that Vlad was evil, but that was only after I heard Vlad ranting about how much of a mistake I was. I freed him and we beat Vlad and destroyed the 'perfect' clone, but if it wasn't for me he would have never been in that situation anyway.

"Even after that, he trusted me and offered to provide me a home, just because he was that nice. I couldn't say yes because of what I'd done to him, but he's never been anything but nice to me. I betrayed him, kidnapped him, played with his feelings, helped his archenemy, hurt him, electrocuted him, and almost let Vlad win, and yet he just brushed that off for me. He tried to get me to stay, but didn't push like Vlad had, even after all I'd done for him. He never tried to use me, and was never mean to me, even after everything. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it wasn't your fault Vlad manipulated you, and you shouldn't beat yourself up over it. No matter what, Danny'll forgive you, just because he's that kind of person."

"I though we were talking about Phantom there?"

Dani winked at me teasingly, like she knew something I didn't. "You'd be surprised how alike Danny and Phantom are, it's like they're the same person." She yawned, "Looks like I was the one who ended up telling you the story. Good night Val."

I was confused by both Dani's story, and the inside joke of hers after, but let all thoughts flee my head as I reached over and flicked the light off.


	6. Some More Kicking Action

**I had a lot of fun with this chapter, so sue me. Devon is actually a goth kid at my school who writes poetry. He never shares it, but since I write too (mostly stories and Fanfiction i never share, but sometimes poems) we exchange poems and his poems are really good. I'm pretty sure he had a crush on a blonde girl with blue eyes from his poems. Since i have brownish blondish hair and hazel eyes, I don't have to go through the hormonal angst of thinking whether he likes me or not. I'm also pretty sure nobody in my school knows what FanFiction is anyway,s o I don't have to worry about telling you this. I based Devon-in-the-story off of Devon-in-the-real-world so that's why i blathered for a moment. I hope you like kick-butt Val!**

The next morning was eventful as Dani and I both found out that one or both of the people that had given her DNA hated toast with a passion. She bit into the toasted bread I had set out for her, waited a second, then spit it in the garbage, coughing. "YUCK!" she'd exclaimed, and we'd quickly realized that she hated toast for some unknown reason.

I'd filled a bowl full of sugary–but-cheap cereal for her and eaten the rest of her toast for her while scribbling a note on the fridge that Dani hated toast and we shouldn't make it for her, for Dad's benefit. I didn't want him to be alarmed if he gave Dani toast.

When Dani finished gobbling the cereal she ran out the door and transformed in the same alley as before. This time I could activate my suit with ease and flew after her in loops, playing in the air because I had time to kill.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP! My ghost detector went off. I was about to look down to check who it was, because I set it to ignore Dani, when I heard, "Hey Val. I heard from the little princess that you're not shooting at me anymore! Does that mean I can fly with you to school?"

"Hey Danny!" Dani greeted, waving erratically. She started bouncing in the air and doing twists and the occasional flip. Both Phantom and I watched her as she bounced around like a pinball in the air.

"Man Dani," Phantom exclaimed as his "cousin" flew past him as a blur. "What did you eat to make you so hyper?"

"Cereal," she responded, stopping in the air and sending him a reproachful frown. "And why didn't you tell me you didn't like toast. That was a horrible surprise! It tasted worse than that burrito I got in San Rosa, California!"

"How was I supposed to know you hadn't eaten toast before, or that my dislike of it would transfer to you?" Phantom wondered, arching an eyebrow. "You lived on the streets, I assumed you would have eaten toast."

"Somehow, I managed to avoid it until this morning," Dani replied. "I can still taste it on my tongue, even with those sugary flakes Val gave me."

"Sorry, I'll give you a list of my favorite and least favorite foods, okay? You'll probably like different things than me, but I really hate toast, especially if it's the Jack Fenton variety." Both of us gave him strange looks. "Don't ask," he directed, flying slowly towards school.

"If you don't mind me asking, why do you eat? I didn't even know ghosts could eat, beside halfas."

"Ghosts can eat, breath, sleep, do whatever humans do, but they don't have to," Phantom told both Dani and I. "That way, even if I'm stuck, powerless, on a desert isle with only toast to eat, I don't have to! Halfas don't have to eat as often as humans, which is probably why Dani survived on the streets so long, but they do have to eat. They have to sleep too, but I don't think they have to breath in ghost form. Its just habit that keeps them breathing in ghost form. Which is why Dani can seriously talk forever when she looks like this." He motioned down at himself.

"Anyway, school's gonna start in ten minutes. Wanna race?" he challenged.

"Oh, you are on!" I accepted.

At the exact same time, Dani smirked and said, "Challenge accepted. You're going down, Phantom!" We each took our starting positions, and set off. Surprisingly, Dani took first and Phantom took last. I had a feeling he hadn't really tried, because not only could he go almost twice as fast as me, I was pretty sure he could lap Dani at least once. I'd seen him when he actually wanted to go fast, like escaping Skulker. He could zoom so fast he broke the sound barrier and beyond. Kind of made you realize how scary he had the potential to be.

"You didn't try!" Dani exclaimed when we reached the school.

Phantom smiled sheepishly at her. "Hey, gotta fly, catch you on the flip side!" With that, he sunk into the ground, waving at both Dani and I. I sighed at his antics and de-activated my suit. Dani and I parted ways once inside the building, each heading our separate ways. I couldn't help but think that things were finally looking up for the Grey family.

When I got out for lunch from my incredibly boring classes, the only eventful part being Danny's increasingly intriguing entrances, I immediately searched for Dani. Instead, I found Danny, hiding behind my locker block from a revenge seeking Dash.

"Why don't you just tell him to back off?" I wondered. "After what you did yesterday, I find it hard to believe that you couldn't intimidate him enough to leave you alone."

Danny shrugged at me. "It's simple, really. Dash isn't going to stop bullying until he knows how it feels to be the one under somebody else's mercy continually. I'm not the one who can teach him that lesson, that'll probably only be taught to him after high school, when his boss is Mikey or Lester. Right now, he doesn't think bullying hurts people that much, and like I said he probably won't know until after high school. I know how to take a hit; it's something that comes with having a mother with a 9th degree black belt. Kids like Mikey and Lester don't, so it's better if he hits me.

"Also, I don't hold a grudge like they would. When he ends up working for them, if he only hit me up, they won't try to make his life miserable because it won't be personal. So, I know how to stop a punch, so what. If I stop Dash from hitting me, he'll go after other kids and in the end make his life miserable. It's better for everybody if it's just me getting hit. It's not like my future is going anywhere, what with my grades the way they are. I can't say there haven't been times when I haven't wanted to pummel him, but that wouldn't be right. The only way I'll fight back is if he's doing something like he did yesterday, threatening the people I care about. So, you know, I guess you don't have to worry about getting punched by Dash."

I considered this for a while. Danny had just said he cared about me. Indirectly, but still, my heart felt like it was jump-roping." That's really noble of you, Danny," I told him finally. "If you want to improve your grades, we could do our homework together or something. You tutor me and I'll tutor you." What bothered me was that Danny didn't care how much he got hurt, he wanted the person who hurt him to be happy, along with people who didn't even care about him other than a human shield for Dash's wrath. The other thing that bothered me was that he was smart enough to see that happening, see all of that through, but not pass sophomore math? Danny Fenton was a conundrum with a capital C.

"Well, I guess I have to go shove the cafeteria mystery meat down my throat before Tucker eats it all." I smiled at his joke. "Do you and Dani want to sit with us?"

"Uh…I have the feeling Sam won't like it," I stated.

Danny smirked in a familiar way I couldn't place. "I have a feeling Sam can't be mad for more than a second right now. Please Val," he gave me the puppy dog eyes, and I suddenly realized where Dani had gotten them.

"Okay, I'll sit with you guys," I relented. Danny pumped his fist victoriously. "But ONLY if Dani wants to!" This didn't faze Danny as he grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into the cafeteria. I had my bag lunch in my hand and went to find the Dani to tell her our new seating arrangements.

I found her at the end of the lunch line with an unrecognizable purple mass on her plate. "Even I don't think I should eat this, and I ate food of the ground!" Dani exclaimed. I swear I saw the food twitch.

"Yeah… maybe you shouldn't eat that. Oh, and before I forget, Danny invited us to sit at his table with Sam and Tucker, if you want."

"YEAH!" Dani exclaimed. She grabbed my hand and went and Danny's, who was just leaving the lunch line with a brown chunk and what looked like a pink banana-pear on his plate, and dragged us both over to the table formally known as "the loser table". Sam and Tucker were already sitting on the same side of the table, and Dani sat all three of us down on the other side of the table, sitting between us.

"…and I know he goes to a different school but still I thought he was really nice. I think he's trustworthy because he hasn't tried to make any moves on me like Elliot/Gregor had, but he did mention he was going to be there at the Skulk and Lurk tonight. I think he might be interested in me and I think I may be interested in him and his poems are so deep and I know my parents won't like him because he's goth but since when have I cared about that?" Sam was babbling to Tucker while Tucker was fiddling with his PDA.

"What's she talking about?" both Dani and I asked Danny.

"This guy named Devon she met last night," Tucker replied without looking up. "They met at her favorite goth bookstore for a poetry slam and his poem was so 'deep' that Sam now has a huge crush on him. She hasn't stopped talking about him since we met this morning to walk to school, which Danny so nicely skipped out on leaving me to deal with the newly in love goth. She's going to meet up with him again tonight and they're probably gonna hit it off and then Danny'll probably blow us off for the walk to school tomorrow too and I'll have to hear more about Sam's date with her precious Devon."

Sam elbowed him in the gut for this, but Danny just smiled at her. "I'm happy you finally found somebody who understands you, Sam. For a while there I was afraid you liked me, but that's ridiculous."

I was fully expecting Sam to blush at this comment, but to my surprise, she didn't. "Actually, Danny, I did like you, but I think I'm over it know. No offence or anything, and you're still a really great guy, but-"

"Devon is so cool. His hair is as black as night and his poems just touch something inside of you. He's also a great artist and a little funny, but not annoyingly so. I really hope he likes me!" Tucker interrupted in a bad imitation of Sam's voice. Sam elbowed him in the groin and looked back up at us.

Danny had already finished shoving down the brown chunk and banana-pear and smiled at Tucker. "Uhh…" Tucker trailed off. Without another word he showed Danny the screen of his PDA. Danny's eyes widened and he shot a quick look at Dani and I.

"Really sorry about this, but I gotta-"

"Do what ya gotta do, cuz." Dani flapped a dismissive hand at him. He grinned gratefully at Dani, grabbed his lunch tray, and ran out of the cafeteria. I gazed after him, wondering what he had to do. I tried to catch a glimpse of the PDA screen, but Tucker had gone back to playing whatever he'd been playing before and all evidence was gone.

As soon as Danny was out of the cafeteria, Dash acted. I hadn't noticed him getting up, being too busy from trying to scrounge evidence from Tucker's PDA screen. What brought the action to my attention was Sam's groan. "Ugh…what does he want? Danny may not hold a grudge, but I seriously hate his guts!"

I looked up and saw Dash coming directly toward us, looking like he had just one the Olympics. "Well, well, well," he said condescendingly. "Looks like the little brat who ruined my rep doesn't have her older brother to protect her anymore."

"I can't hit him, he's a normal human. Danny said that I have super strength similar to all ghosts, and if I punch a human it could hurt them really bad," Dani whispered to me. I wondered briefly which Danny she meant, probably Phantom, but dismissed it as unimportant.

"Go away Dash," Sam spat. "Beating up a little girl isn't going to make you feel any better about yourself, and it isn't going to do anything more than prove how much of a jerk you really are."

"That's where you're wrong, Manson!" Dash stabbed a finger in her direction. "Now that Fenton's not here to attempt to protect this little brat of a younger sister he has, I can get a little revenge and have fun doing it. And the whole school is going to watch!"

"Tucker!" I heard Sam whisper-growl. "Do something! Dani's instincts are raw and she's not very good at controlling them. Remember what Danny told us about auto-mode. If anything attacks her, her ghostly instincts will take over and she'll strike out. Even if Dash is an ostentatious moron with less brain cells than a gold fish, we can't let him get hurt like that. You've seen Danny's raw ghost instincts!"

Huh, so Sam and Tucker knew about Dani. That's not actually that much of a shock as I thought it would be. But, unfortunately, I'd seen what ghost instincts could do too, having fought animal ghosts who completely relied on instinct, and if Dani's triggered on Dash, well, I didn't want to see the aftermath. That must be why Danny had saved Dani even though Dani could probably take a punch from the jock without even getting hurt. He knew what would have happened if Dani got hit, and he didn't want to deal with a very much beaten football player.

There was only one logical course of action. "Hey muscle-head!" I called. I mean, it's worked on Skulker, so why not Dash? "She's actually Danny's cousin, she's my little adopted sister. She could probably beat you up so hard that you'd have to have plastic surgery to remove you head from your butt, but since it's already stuck pretty far in there I don't think she'd need to try that hard."

There was a collective "oooh" from around the cafeteria. Sam was looking at me with new respect, and Tucker looked close to laughing as he recorded the whole thing with his PDA.

"What did you just say to me, Grey?" he asked, trying to be intimidating. I wasn't impressed. I'd faced off with ghosts ten times as tough as he was, and five times smarter.

"I see I need to put this in a way you can understand. If you hurt Dani, even though she can probably fight off ten of you, I'll hurt you so bad you'll need a hospital."

"Move it, Grey!" He tried to forcefully push me aside, but it seems I had a bit of an instinct problem too. I grabbed his wrist, twisted it harshly, and then shifted my weight forward so his arm wrenched back in his socket. It only just wasn't dislocated, but that didn't stop Dash from crying out like a newborn baby. He wrenched his arm from my grasp and cradled it to his chest. Then, with his other arm, he punched out at me.

Did I mention I had an instinct problem? Well, I should have. I grabbed his forearm, buried my shoulder in his gut, and flipped him over me. Unfortunately for Dash, he landed right on top of Dani's uneaten purple blob of a lunch. I needed to teach her than school lunch may be about the same price as a lunch from home, but it was much more disgusting.

Dash finally managed to get up, and cradling his hurt arm to his chest, preserve his dignity by punching out at me again. I pulled his legs out from under his with a simple swipe. He landed on his butt, and didn't get up for a while. When he finally got up, he simply shot me a vicious glare and shuffled off.

**I made Danny really thoughtful. This story is DannyXValerie so if you're DannyXSam you may not want to read it because Sam and Devon are going to go out. I know Sam's not the type to obsess over a guy but i needed a little Tucker humor. Hope you liked!**


	7. Piggy Back Version 1

**Oh goodness, i just re-read the beginning and oh my god my grammar is absolutely horrifying. I feel awful for having put you through that. After this chapter I'm going to edit the life out of this. I LOVE the Korean children for some reason, I think I'm going to bring them back up. Anyway, enjoy. If you want to see anything in particular in this story that you think would be awesome and I'm just not thinking of it, feel free to review!**

After school, I got detention for fighting with Dash. Detention for the next week, but the some of the witnesses of the fight vouched for me so I didn't get a more serious punishment. Tucker wanted to show lancer the video he'd taken, but Lancer had refused and simply given me a week's detention. I was going to be in big trouble with Dad.

I ended up in detention with Danny (constantly late or skipping, and fighting Dash yesterday), Dani (insulting Dash when he came after Danny and she was there), Jacqueline Martinez (backtalk), and Nathan (breaking into the records to stalk Natalie Benson, the girl he'd gone after when he gave up on me). Lancer was supervising all of us, even though Dani was a freshman and Jacqueline was a senior. Naturally, he spent all of detention correcting papers and glaring at Danny when he discovered yet another missing assignment. Danny had looked apologetic, but hadn't said anything.

I got to work on my homework in detention, and so did Danny and Dani. Danny, however, was interrupted when he let out a sharp gasp. His hand immediately shot up in the air.

"Just go, Mr. Fenton, but if you're not back in five minutes I'll expect you to make it up by staying after another ten." Danny nodded and sprinted out of the room. I noticed Dani frowning worriedly after him.

_What's going on? What's wrong?_ I wrote on a slip of paper and slid it onto Dani's desk.

_Nothing that you need to worry about too much. But is your ghost alarm going off, because it looks like it's shaking._

I checked the "watch" and found that it was indeed going off. I always put it on vibrate for school, but I'd been so confused about Danny I hadn't even noticed it vibrating. The ratings were 8.9 and 6.6, Phantom and a different ghost.

_It's you cousin and a 6.6, should we interfere?_ I wrote.

_No, Lancer'll get suspicious, and Danny can probably handle it. If we hear any demolition we should go, but I think that he can just pull off another silent catch. Hopefully the thermos isn't too full, Danny caught a bunch last night and didn't have time to release them back into the Zone. There have to be at least twenty-five in there, if not more._

_Another silent catch? Twenty five?_ I wrote down my questions and again slipped the paper to Dani.

_Most of the twenty-five are animal ghosts, but they still take up room in the thermos. The only real threats are the speaking ghosts with a rating of 5.0 or higher. If a ghost registers over 7.5 it's a big threat. I'm 7.5 exactly, and my power levels aren't going to grow a lot like Danny's (phantom) because I got all my energy from his DNA. He's gonna keep growing though, and in ten years he breaks the scale by being above 10.9, but that's only cause he bonded with Vlad's ghost side and formed the most evil ghost in existence. But he fixed that and it's not gonna happen, so don't worry about that._

_Why don't I know about the animal ghost attacks?_ I wrote back, alarmed.

_Most don't register on your alarm thingy, being too weak. Some don't even trip the ghost sense unless you're within a five foot radius of them. Some don't trip it at all._

"I'm back!" Danny shouted as he skidded into the room.

"Five seconds to spare, Mr. Fenton," Lancer stated. "You're getting better."

Danny grinned at him and took his seat again, starting once again on his homework. Not five minutes later Lancer let us go.

"Hey, Dani, Val, you guys want to come over to my place and finish homework and stuff? Jazz is probably going to be spending time at the library and my parents are probably going to be down in the lab so we'll virtually have the place to ourselves," Danny offered.

"Okay, but I'm not doing your homework for you," I told him. He winked at me teasingly and grabbed Dani by the waist. Dani protested sharply as Danny swept her onto his back, grabbing her feet so she was riding piggy back style.

"Dani, this is called riding piggy back. I'm gonna let you ride all the way home, but if you start to strangle me I'll put you down, grab Val, and run as fast as I can. Understand?"

"Yep." Dani looked like she was a little confused, but nonetheless having fun.

"Good, now let's go!" Danny started off and I was surprised that he didn't look like he was having any difficulty carrying her. Just earlier this day he'd failed at climbing the rope in gym. Danny was very, very confusing, both of them were.

"You coming or not?" Danny wondered, grinning back at me with Dani still on his back.

A smile worked its way onto my face and I ran a couple steps to catch up. "Of course."

Danny and I raced to FentonWorks, Dani egging on whoever was behind, which was mostly Danny. I'm guessing that this was due to the fact that he had a very excited thirteen-year-old half-ghost girl on his back. I let my guard down and started running slower so I could stay back with him and Dani. Near the end, he flashed me a brilliant white smile and sprinted ahead of me and the rest of the way to his house. He was fast enough that by the time I registered this and began to really run he was already too far in the lead.

Dani cheered as he darted up the steps and wriggled her way off his back just as I got there. "Cheater," I said to him, not really meaning it. He only flashed me a smile and wiggled his eyebrows. I rolled my eyes at him.

Suddenly, a thought struck me. "You think it'll be a good idea to bring Dani into your house? What if there are alarms?"

Danny smiled broader, as if I had said something funny. "Don't worry, all alarms disabled. Half ghosts are only in danger in my house if they steal Dad's fudge when they don't know that password." He winked at Dani and me. "I know the password."

He unlocked the front door and let us both in. "Mom! Dad! I'm home! I'm going to be up in my room doing homework with a couple of friends! If you need me, knock!"

"Okay sweetie!" was the reply. Danny led us up the stairs and into the room I recognized from those brief periods I'd been in it before.

"Where'd that one come from?" Dani asked Danny, pointing to a burn on Danny's ceiling.

"Ember," he replied casually. "Woke me up and I was kinda pissed. Hair roasted the plaster pretty well. Remind me to replace that." That was cryptic, but Dani seemed to get it. I, however, was confused.

"Hey Dani, Jazz got on my case for eating a bunch of junk so could you…"

"As long as I get my fair share of said junk." Dani stated. "Show me where." My level of confusion only increased when Danny pointed to a spot on his wall next to the door that was covered in one of the many NASA posters. Dani nodded, turned her hand intangible, and reached into the space indicated. A moment later she pulled her hand out of the wall with a six-pack of coke, three jumbo bags of chips, and a large bag of chips. How would Danny get those in there?

Danny took a coke and cracked the tab. "The smaller bag is full of ectoplasmic chips," Danny told Dani, glancing briefly at me. "They help keep up your strength, and when Phantom comes 'cause he's wrecked from a fight he eats them to restore ectoplasm. Also, if you get injured, the extensive ghost first aid kit is behind that poster." He gestured with his head to another NASA poster. "And the new password to my computer is behind that one. I put it there because the new one is un-guessable and if something happens Tucker may need it. However, he can't get it unless he smashes open the wall, so I'll know I need to change it."

"Paulina Fenton?" Dani guessed. I frowned slightly.

"Nope, I told you its un-guessable. Plus, I kinda got over that." He shot me a quick glance. "The obsession she has with Phantom is just creepy beyond meassure."

"Sam Fenton?" The frown deepened.

"No! Dani, she's into that Devon guy now. Plus, it's not like that."

"Valerie Fenton." I admit, the frown disappeared at that.

Danny glanced at me, blushing. "No, I designed it to be un-guessable. Not easily guessable. It's not UR1crazedupfruitloop either, though it used to be. I actually just typed a bunch of gibberish into the bar, wrote it down on a slip of paper, and submitted it. I had to use the piece of paper to remember it until I memorized it. Then I stuck the paper in the wall. I changed my password mostly so Jazz couldn't get into the ghost files anymore. Even she can't guess a bunch of randomness!"

Dani smiled mischievously and reached toward the poster, hand turning intangible.

"If you do I swear I'll go downstairs, grab the Ghost Gabber, duct tape it to you with ecto-proof duct tape, duct tape you to a chair, and get all objects that could be used to get the duct tape off far, far away. How do you like every sentence you say repeated and added with 'Fear me.'"

"No, please don't use the Ghost Gabber!" Dani exclaimed in mock terror. "The most annoying of the Fenton inventions and my one true weakness!" Then she smiled evilly at Danny. "I wonder what would happen if we hid it in Vlad's secret lab?"

Danny chuckled. "Oh, imagine the possibilities. But seriously, I need to get this math homework done. The we can plot."

It turned out that Danny actually managed to get most of his homework done, even though he kept gasping and running out of the room. Dani told me that he did it all the time and that I shouldn't worry too much. I couldn't help but worry anyway.

I helped Danny a lot with his Math and English homework, which seemed to be the classes he most missed out on. He helped me a lot with science and art, which he was surprisingly good at. We also talked a lot, and Dani was more than happy to tell Danny repeatedly home I had beaten Dash in the cafeteria earlier. I could have sworn I heard him mutter, "Stupid depressed Korean children attracting Spectra!" I brushed it off as mishearing.


	8. Thugs

**I'm sorry but I'm really craving review right now so I guess I'm going to be pushy and ask that if you are reading this can you please review? That would be really nice, thanks. Any DxV lovers here? If so, the ending of this chapter might make you happy. No, the don't kiss, I'm saving that for later. *Wink*. I love DxV, but this is one of my first attempts at writing anything really cutesy romance-y so forgive me if it's really green. ENJOY!**

When Dani and I finished (which was around six thirty because of all the things we talked about besides homework), though Danny still had work to do, he insisted he walk us home. Dani protested that she could fly and my hover board worked just fine.

"I'll give you another piggy back ride," Danny offered.

"That's not as fun as flying," Dani pouted, but I saw just a trace of a smile on her lips.

"Still fun though, right?" Danny asked, sounding as if he knew the answer to that anyway.

"Maybe…" Dani trailed off, quirking her lips.

"Come on Dani," Danny teased. "You know you want your overprotective older cousin to walk you and your new adoptive sister home. While we walk, we can talk about exactly where in Vlad's lab to hide the Ghost Gabber."

Dani immediately perked up. Danny, instead of crouching down and letting her clamber on like most people would have, grabbed Dani by the stomach and lifted her over his head. Instead of a regular piggyback hold, Dani sat on his shoulders, feet draped around his neck.

"Grab onto my hair, but don't pull it out," Danny instructed. Dani did so, winding the silky raven locks around each individual finger. "This technically isn't a piggyback, but close enough. It gets you higher so you can feel the wind. Tell me if you get cold, okay?"

"Okay," Dani consented, squirming slightly. We started walking down the street, and I blushed when saw a couple off in the distance kiss. I couldn't help but remember the time Danny and I had almost counted as a couple.

"I think we should put it in the wall or something," Dani said suddenly. "That way it'll be a while before he finds it." It took me a minute to realize they were talking about where to put the Ghost Gabber in Vlad's house.

"What about one of those examination tables he so loves?" Danny offered. Dani giggled.

"Or maybe that program of your mom," I suggested. "If we can install it's tech into that program it should 'repeat every sentence he says with fear me' or whatever you said."

"Yeah!" both Danny and Dani agreed in awed voices.

"I bow to the master of pranks," teased Danny.

"Don't you dare!" Dani threatened. "I'll fall off!"

Suddenly, a rough hand grabbed my arm and pulled me harshly into an alley. I was tossed against a wall along with Danny, and Dani, who was still on his shoulders. "Give me your money!" demanded a voice. In one quick movement, Danny got Dani off his shoulders and behind me, but still managed to keep his eyes on where I assumed the thug was. I couldn't see very well because it was dark in the alley.

"Dani, stay behind Valerie no matter what. Let her handle these guys if any of them get near you. Valerie, don't let any of the get close to Dani."

"Danny, I can take care of myself!" Dani protested loudly.

"That's what I'm worried about," Danny replied smoothly. "Your instincts haven't been trained down yet because Vlad didn't care enough about anybody who'd attack you. If anybody comes within a yard of you with swinging fists, they're probably going to need to go to the hospital. I'll help you train them down soon, but until you get them under control it's not safe."

Dani blinked at him. "So you're worried, not because a horde of thugs just tried to mug us, but because if said horde of thugs gets close enough to me I'll hurt them. You're worried about people who are trying to steal you money getting injured? You're almost as loopy as Vlad!"

"Hey," Danny complained. "It's not possible for me to be that loopy. And, concerning the first thing, these guys are just people without enough money for food or a home. They probably don't have enough money for the medical bill you'll cause them."

"HEY!" interrupted the thugs' leader. "Give me your money!"

"No," Danny replied innocently. "All I have on me is twenty five bucks, which I was going to use for the new movie coming out in two weeks and to buy Dad fudge. You're going to use it to serve your nicotine addiction by buying cigarettes. Believe me, you're a lot better without them. I recommend getting a job in the service program after you stop craving, and using it to buy a nice apartment for you so you can get a real job. However, you're about to attack me right now so you can grab the money off me. I'm ready for this, as long as you don't approach them. As you heard before, that little girl lived like you for a while, and could probably hurt you bad enough to send you to the hospital, something you can most definitely not afford. And yes, Dani, I've been listening to Jazz."

The thug roared and attacked Danny. To my shock, Danny simply dodged and the leader face-planted into the wall. The rest of the thugs attacked Danny and I watched in silent surprise as he avoided every attack.

Most of the thugs had knives or jagged pieces of glass as weapons, and Danny would tap the wrist of the hand holding it hard enough so the thug would drop the makeshift weapon. Then, he would kick it down the alley, as far away as possible, so the thugs couldn't get it. I was so busy watching Danny duck and dodge and yet not touch a thug beyond a simple tap to get their weapon away from them that I didn't realize that one was going after Dani until too late.

He came at her with his fist, but never actually got within eighteen inches of her. Dani wheeled around and kicked the guy in the soft spot. The kick was apparently hard enough so that it sent the guy flying back across the alley before ramming into a building two blocks away. All the thugs' eyes widened as they tried to get a better look at Dani, because that was supposed to be impossible.

Danny sighed and shook his head sadly. "That was exactly what I was trying to avoid when I said don't attack them. She may not have the powers in human form anymore, but she has the endurance, strength, and killer instinct. I feel so bad for you.

"Look, I'm going to call the cops and you guys are going to stay where you are, alright? They'll get your friend medical assistance and you won't get any jail time if you don't run, but you may get probation. If you're nice to them, they may even help you out a little with your lives. I'll put in a good word. But, you are not under any circumstances, going to tell them a little girl did that to your friend. Tell them that I did it, protecting my friend, and we were already over near that building. He did not go soaring two blocks away from little girls kick. Okay? Good."

Danny took out his phone and pressed one number. Wow, he had nine-one-one on speed dial? That seems pointless.

"Phantom?" I heard the chief of police's voice echo down the alley. What? Why did he call Danny, Phantom?

Danny shot me a nervous look before laughing slightly. "Guess I forgot to take off speaker." He pressed a few buttons on his phone before going on.

"Yeah, it's me. I just saw Danny Fenton kick some thug in the soft spot to protect two girls. He doesn't want to press any charges, but he does want you to come down now. He thinks he accidentally hurt the guy." Wha? Why was Danny pretending to be Phantom? This was really confusing, and I was tired of being confused.

There was a murmur on the other end of the line. "Yeah, most of them just have a nicotine problem. I sympathize, and suggest the service program."

More mumbling. "Yeah, of course. One of them looks like he could be Danny Fenton's little sister, and the other is African American with pretty green eyes and wavy black hair. Her name is Valerie Grey. The other girl is her adopted little sister, Danielle Grey. They don't want to press charges either." Wait…Danny though my eyes were pretty?

The chief of police said something else. "Yeah, I'll make sure all of them stay there." More chatter from the other end. "Yeah, will do. I'll be invisible though. Right now they can't see me, but I talked to Danny Fenton. I was also wondering if you could have one of your agents call Mr. Grey and tell him his daughter is going to be late."

He paused, listening to the other guy. "Really? That's awesome! Maybe I could drop by and talk to them or something. I wouldn't want to disappoint them. And yes, but I have to go now, Mr. Chief-of-Police-slash-Officer-Delfigino. Yes I promise I won't give out your cell number for prank calls. Yada, yada, yada, bye!"

As soon as he hung up he turned to me. "I'm betting you're wondering why exactly I pretended I was Phantom and the reason is that Phantom has been helping a lot lately and this is the cell he uses which has the Chief of Police's number on speed dial, but only he is supposed to know it, not Danny Fenton. Please don't tell anybody."

"Okay," I agreed after a pause. "But only if you come with us to the lake this weekend." Danny gave me a shocked look that looked pretty adorable on his face. "Dani wanted to invite you, but she hasn't yet, so I'm asking. Will you come?"

"I would have said yes even if you didn't overhear that. What time should I be there?" he wondered.

"Not sure yet, I'll call you when I get the details. I still have the number from when we were…" I trailed off awkwardly. My heart fluttered when Danny gave me a lopsided grin, painfully reminding me how much I still wanted what I had turned down half a year ago.

I heard the blare of police sirens in the distance, and Danny grinned at me for what seemed like the billionth time since yesterday. "Ready to be questioned within an inch of your life?" he wondered. I nodded, gazed into those perfect blue eyes, and found myself thanking Dani for being the little miracle worker she was and somehow getting Danny to forgive me for everything. I didn't deserve a great guy like Danny, but I wanted him anyway.

**OH BOY! I had to type that last sentence just because sometimes I can't control it! Oh, I loved it! Hasta luego!**


	9. Explanations

**WARNING! This chapter is a really boring filler made so I can get all of my theories for this story in one neat chapter. This is also a way of getting you guys, and the the characters, to understand what exactly the ghostly instincts do, though I was hoping i got that problem down. Try to enjoy!**

After the police finished questioning us to the ends of the earth, Danny insisted on walking us the rest of the way home. "I know it's only a few blocks, but what'll happen if you get mugged again? Plus, I bet you're itching for some answers. I'll explain everything when we get to your apartment, assuming your Dad knows?"

"Yep, he knows." Dani replied.

We walked the rest of the way in a comfortable silence. Unfortunately, Dad was waiting outside the building when we got home, arms crossed. When he saw Danny, his frown lightened a little. Dad liked Danny.

"I just got a call from the police department!" he shouted angrily. "And what is this about a fight at school?" I smiled weakly at him.

Danny stepped forward slightly. "Listen, Mr. Grey. I'm sure that you're really confused about all this, especially when you don't even know all of Dani's basics, but if you give me some time I'm sure I can explain everything."

Dad considered this for a moment, then nodded and led the way to the apartment. We all sat down at the kitchen table and Dad locked his hands and leaned forward, staring intently at Danny. "Explain."

Danny took a deep breath, and let it out in a puff through his mouth. "Okay, I guess I'll just start at the beginning." Dani gave him a confused look. "Dani's beginning, anyway," he corrected. Dani relaxed.

"So, umm, well, Vlad combined one DNA sample from me, and one from Danny Phantom for Dani. We all know how that works, two X chromosomes and stuff. Still, she was a baby so Vlad used growth serum on her so she's physically thirteen, but less than two years old mentally. The growth serum did weird things though, so she's absorbed a lot of knowledge and she can pass high school and stuff. Blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada."

Danny's hand reached up to rub the back of his neck, a nervous habit he had. "Unfortunately, she didn't have a mid-morph sample to keep her stable, though she was more stable than the other clones. Vlad used her because she was 'disposable' and 'useful'." Danny spat these words with vengeance. I was reminded on how Vlad could have called me that.

"Valerie and I-I mean, Phantom stabilized Dani because Vlad was trying to melt her down into ecto-gunk. Without the mid-morph sample, her physical anatomy as a ghost isn't connected to her human anatomy, and she doesn't have the powers or healing of a ghost in human form. However, her reflexes and instincts are hardwired into her brain, so she has those, along with her ghostly strength for some reason." Well I guess that's why she could hit that guy so hard.

"Those three together are a deadly combination, and Dani should come to train with me as soon as possible. Vlad wasn't going to use her past getting the mid-morph sample, so he didn't train them. If Dani's senses detect a threat on the subconscious level, they'll directly trigger her muscle movement without taking the time to raise it to her attention first. They'll stop the threat by either dodging or attacking. They tend to prefer attacking." Danny winced as if remembering a bad memory.

"What happened at school was regular high school drama gone wrong. Dani spilled her food all over Paulina's new shirt with the white DP logo…" Danny winced again, "...and Paulina got mad so she told Dash to hurt Dani because that's what you do in high school. However, I didn't want to see Dash lose his ability to help create life because he tried to do what Queen Paulina said, so I stopped him. I kinda trashed his rep and apparently he had it out for Dani. He attacked her again today when I left as revenge and damage control and Valerie stopped him from getting seriously hurt, though I did hear he got a bad rash from Dani's lunch."

"Glad I didn't eat that!" Dani exclaimed.

Danny chuckled. "Again, tonight in the alley both me and Valerie had to keep the thugs from getting close to Dani. Bad news is I failed. One of them got close enough to strike and Dani kicked him in the soft spot so hard he flew two blocks before landing. Ouch. We didn't press charges, but all of them are going to have to get into the service program as a kind of rehab."

"Service program?" Dad wondered. "What service program?"

"Oh," Danny waved a hand nonchalantly. "It's a new program for people to pick up and fix any carnage from the ghost fights. They get paid $8.50 an hour, which is just above minimum wage. Lots of teenagers and homeless people and thugs and such are on the team. A police officer always watches them just incase the thugs start…causing trouble, but so far it's a really good program. It helps people get their lives to improve and actually saves money because the city doesn't have to make a big deal out of picking up after the fights."

"That's a really good idea, Danny!" Dani praised.

"Why thank you." Danny winked at her.

"It was your idea? How'd you get people to listen?" I wondered.

"Actually, it was Phantom's idea, and people tend to listen to Phantom. But I have a few tricks up my sleeve. I did rally a bunch of freshman to save their parents from a ghost pirate ship, after all."

"I heard about that! I mean I wasn't there, but I heard about it. Dash said that that was all Phantom, that you abandoned them halfway through and Phantom had to save them!" I told him. "I don't really believe that."

Danny shook his head with a 'is he really that stupid' expression on his face. "Actually, it's true. I was kinda forced to walk the plank and fall to my death, but Phantom saved me and went and beat their butts so me almost dying really doesn't matter to them."

"Wow." Dani stated. "Dash really deserved getting beat up by my AWESOME older sister and COOL older cousin, didn't he?" Both Danny and I grinned at her for this.

"I have a question," Dad said. We all looked to him. "How do you know all of this?"

"Tuck hacked some of Vlad's secret files before the back-up program detected us, so we don't know everything, but we know a lot. I could probably scribble down a list of powers Dani is supposed to get so you'll at least know what's going on when she's suddenly in ghost form with two heads. Also, I'll drop by with some ectoplasm she can eat or drink or something if she gets hurt. I'm worried one of the ghosts might go after her. If you find her injured, call me. Val knows the number."

"Okay, question, what's a mid-morph sample and why was it so crucial for Danielle?"

Danny froze and locked his panic-filled eyes on Dani's. "Uhh…"

"I-it's a sample collected when a halfa is transforming," Dani blurted. "Why he didn't just get it from himself is beyond me, but he needed one for his perfect clone."

The pieces clicked together in my mind. "And if Vlad didn't want one from himself, he must have gone after the third halfa you mentioned."

Danny made a croaking sound and gave Dani a strange look. "You.. you told her, ab-about-"

"Just that there's a third halfa and she doesn't have to worry about having hurt him. She was having a guilty conscience." Danny visibly relaxed. Did he know the other halfa?

"Oh, th-that's good," he stuttered. "Getting back to the point, we should probably have after-school sessions or something so Dani can hardwire her reflexes to recognize whether it's a damaging threat or not, and whether or not it wants to hit the threat or not. That'll make sure she doesn't automatically attack anything without reason if it's really close to her. There have been a couple birds that flew a little too close to Phantom when he was training his own instincts down; the fried chicken jokes were inevitable."

Suddenly, Danny gasped, but managed to exhale instead of inhale, which was strange. I could actually see a small fog, but it wasn't that cold, especially indoors. "Uhh…" he turned to Dani. "Look, I have to go. Dad will freak if I accidentally break curfew again. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay, bye Danny!" Dani said a little too enthusiastically, ushering him out.

"Hey, wait!" I called. "Dad, when were we going to head to the lake? Since Dani forgot I invited Danny instead, and he should know when to come over, right?"

"Uhh… yeah. Call me tomorrow, Val. I really need to-"

"You can come around 10:00 am on Saturday, Danny." Dad interrupted. "I'm sure Maddie will be wanting to see you home soon. Good-bye."

"Bye Mr. Grey! Bye Val! Bye Dani! Gotta go!" With that, he took off running down the hall. He'd gone off running a lot when we were (almost) dating, but I still couldn't figure out why.

**Oh goodness, does this deserve reviews? I'll try to get something else up soon to please the angry mob of reviewers and non-reviewers. I love you all! BYE!**


	10. Thread of Friendship

**Sorry for the BORING chapter last time, here's a little bonding. Hopefully you'll enjoy it, because it's a little fluffy. Fluff makes the world go 'round.**

No sooner had the door closed than I heard an explosion outside, accompanied by a shout of, "Ha ha, you have to have better aim than that if you want to hit Da-oof!" I rushed up to my room and looked out the window just in time to see Phantom getting up from a crater he'd made in the street.

"Great, now people can't drive this road!" Phantom spat up at the ghost monster he was fighting. It had several heads, each one with three blood red eyes. It's heads looked similar to that of a lion's, but it's body looked a snake's. Phantom shot an ecto-blast at it, but it moved too slow to dodge and, carried by the momentum of the blast, soared into the sky. Phantom caught it before it could land back on the street blow and stuck something in its belly. A moment later, the ghost-monster was gone in a blast of blue light.

"That's going to bruise, and will probably take most of the night to heal. Thank you, ghost-thingy, for another painful night of sleep, if I even get any because the STUPID Box Ghost is attacking every STUPID five seconds! How does he even get out so often?"

"Hey Phantom!" I yelled, catching his attention and ending his rant. "Sorry to interrupt your pity party, but if you want to 'sleep', I could take over for a night. I didn't even know you slept."

The ghost boy blinked at me in surprise, before letting a giant smile split his features. "Nah, you need sleep more than me. I wake up when my ghost sense goes off anyway, so I can't really avoid it. If you want to keep Boxy in the thermos all night and not tell me, be my guest. I've tried it before, but I've been stuck in one of those things for six hours and it's just something you can't invoke on somebody, no matter how many times they wake you up."

"Really? It can't be that bad?" I wondered.

"No? Imagine that you are turned into a gas with no eyes, ears, mouth, arms, anything. All there is in that infinitesimal darkness is the feeling of you shifting around and taking all of the available space up and more. There is no contact, no anything except the occasional sound from the outside and, when you make them angry, a shaking that makes you shift around more and slam into the top and bottom of your confines again and again? Sound like fun?"

I shuddered at the thought. "If that's what it's really like, why do you even use the thermos?"

"You won't believe this, but being a gas is actually fun if you're not in there for a while. After a while, it gets really claustrophobic, but in the beginning it's almost…enjoyable. There's only one ghost I'll ever keep in the thermos, and he deserves to be stuck in it every second of the rest of eternity for what he did to both the Ghost Zone and the Human realm." Phantom's expression had turned stony, and I decided that this subject was better left alone.

"So, you enjoy being a gas?" I decided to continue.

Phantom blushed. "Yeah, maybe a little. I can only do it for short periods of time voluntarily. Watch." I did watch as his expression turned to one of concentration and his body blurred and shifted, indeed becoming gas-like, though it still held it's basic shape. Then it ended, and he became solid again, gasping for breath.

"Wow," I exclaimed calmly. "Impressive. That was around five seconds."

"Hey," he defended. "Most ghosts can't even do that."

"I was being serious when I said impressive," I told him sincerely. "Why didn't you warn me about Dani's ghostly reflexes?" This was a little sharper, and he cringed slightly.

"Sorry, I thought I could help her get control before anything BAD happened, but I guess it would have been better to tell you." Then he gave me a strange sideways look, and smirked slightly. "What, no ecto-weapons? You almost look like a normal teenage girl. Almost."

"Do you want me to get out an ecto-gun?" I asked.

Phantom raised his hands innocently. "Hey, I might have to get gone. What would the neighbors say if they saw Valerie Grey talking to Danny Phantom? Scandalous! Maybe the girl living below you would want me to give you a kiss?"

I rolled my eyes at him, while he was busy giving me a kissy face that looked suspiciously like a puffer-fish. "Yeah, you wish ghost boy. I'd rather get kissed by your dog."

"What? Not Cujo? He's a terrible romantic. There was this ghost cat with two forms, like him. Chased it up a tree and wouldn't even let it touch his squeaky toy." Phantom shook his head sadly, like he was disappointed.

"You named you dog after a Steven King novel?" I questioned.

Phantom held up his hands. "First of all, not my dog. Second of all, yes. In my defense, it was supposed to be a pun, but he ended up to replying to it all the time." He paused, then tapped his chin and glanced around comically. "Speaking of time, do you know how close it is to eight?"

I glanced at my ghost hunting watch, which also served as a regular watch. "It's 7:42 right now, why?" I wondered.

"Patrol, among other things. Think of it as homework for a teenage ghost superhero, annoying and over-rated, but necessary."

I almost laughed at this. Almost. "Hey," Phantom caught my attention. "It's been really nice talking to you and not getting shot at, but I have to go. Tell Dani I'll be waiting to fly her, and you, to school tomorrow. Gotta take care of my little cousin, don't I?"

"Okay, but don't think I'll even think twice about waiting for you if you're late," I consented.

He gave me a cocky smile. "So you'll think once about it?"

I blinked at him. "It's taking all of my will power to not get the ecto-gun right now."

"And that's my cue, to say adieu," he said. Then he whispered under his breath, "I can't believe I just rhymed, poetry is EVIL!" Turning to fly off, he blew a kiss over his shoulder before just before beginning to float away, winking at me.

"Now I'm getting the ecto-gun!" I yelled at him.

"See you tomorrow!" he yelled in response, speeding off. I stared at the stars for a little longer before turning from the window and going downstairs to prepare water for ramen noodles.

**RUN VALERIE! GET THE ECTO-GUN! Sorry, but i just needed a little of this. If you have any suggestions on where you want the story to go, don't hesitate to tell me. I need a little suggestions for what'll happen at the lake.**


	11. Piggy Back Version 2 and Important AN

**IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT!**

**Oh my gosh, one of my reviewers and friends, Married to Danny, is dying. It's really sad to me and I just wanted to leave this for anybody who wants to read her stories or pay her respect. It's really sad to me, even if I never knew her in real life, just Fanfiction. She was and is a loyal reviewer, and I hope you all pay tribute to her. ~ItTicklesLikeCrazy**

At dinner, Dani seemed a little happier than normal, though whenever we tried to ask her about anything that we'd talked about with Danny earlier she'd clam up like…well, like a clam.

When we were both ready to go to sleep, we each curled up on our beds, but neither reached for the light. After a while, Dani spoke. "Hey Val, what do you think about what happened today?"

"Today? I think today was crazy," I told her truthfully. "Though, I think I may have just formed a tiny thread of friendship with Phantom. He dropped by after beating up some freaky ghost thing and we talked a little. He might not be so bad after all, but that doesn't mean we're on 'friendly' terms yet. Oh, by the way, he told me he'd be waiting to provide a flying escort to school for us."

Dani giggled. "Sometimes I swear, he's so over-protective. What did you talk about?"

"Sticking the Box Ghost in a thermos for just one night," I responded lightly. "He told me that he'd once been stuck in a thermos for six hours and that's why he'd never leave anybody, even the ghost that woke him up every five seconds, inside. He also showed me his ability to turn into a gas, though he can't do it for very long and it seems like a pointless power."

"Are you kidding!" Dani exclaimed. "That's such a useful power. Not only are you almost impossible to harm when you're like than, it's the beginning of teleportation. Since I don't have natural growth it will be a long time, if ever, before I develop the ability to even turn part of my arm gas-like. I'm so jealous! He has the ghostly wail and the ice and now he's got teleportation!"

"Actually, he didn't really seem to be able to do much yet, so I don't think we have to worry about teleporting Danny Phantom's for a while," I joked.

"That's good, because Danny has a bad habit of developing powers before control, and he tends to have problems with it for the next few days. I wouldn't want him teleporting into my shower on accident!" I laughed with Dani at this, and reached over to extinguish the light.

True to his word, when Dani and I made our way to the alley to transform, Phantom was floating there waiting for us. "I'm not late," he said, smirking triumphantly.

"Yeah, but if you keep talking instead of flying we might be," I retorted, changing into my suit.

"I was ready before yo-ack!"

Dani, in her ghost form, suddenly jumped on Phantom's back screaming, "Flying piggyback!"

Phantom twisted his head to the side, trying to look at his knew passenger. "And what brought this on?" he wondered.

"Well, it's less fun on the ground, but it might be cool in the air," Dani explained. "Giddy-up!"

"What, am I a horse now?" Phantom asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Fine, you'll get your flying piggyback, but slow." Without another word, he gestured to me to take flight and took off with Dani…at a pace slower than a leisurely stroll.

"Hey!" Dani protested. "This isn't fun!"

I laughed as I took flight. "Dani, I don't think he's going to work with you. You may just have to get off. I'll let you hitch-hike on my board."

"Cool, can I? It's probably still not as fun as regular flying, but I've never tried it before."

"Hey, neither are flying piggybacks, they're not fun at all!" Phantom told us, with a shake of his head for emphasis. "I had this one time with Skulker and Technus and Kitty, NOT FUN AT ALL!"

"Ghost fights don't count," Dani said stubbornly, settling herself down behind me.

"Yeah, when your life is at risk, nothing is fun," I agreed.

"Not true," Phantom said lightly. "I have fun with the witty banter, and hanging around with you, and I'm pretty sure my life is at risk every time I do that."

"Yeah, yeah, let's get to school. I want to hover board glide, or whatever you do on these things," Dani complained.

"Okay, come on then." Phantom winked at me and zoomed away, looking like a black and white blur.

"Oh, so now you go fast!" Dani yelled after him.

Phantom circled back and stopped just long enough so we could see his happy, cocky smile and wink. "This is SLOW for me. Dani, did you know that I breached 280 MPH last week?"

"NO!" she screeched. I admit, I was a little impressed by this. "Why didn't you tell me? RUDE! I barely have 120 MPH!" I started to cruise fast in the air, trying in vain to catch up to Phantom.

"Hey, I had 112 the first time we tested it. It'll grow slowly," he assured her.

"No! My human and ghost halves are different, remember. I have no growth pattern to follow, so my power will increase just like a normal ghost's!"

"You mean like mine, because, after all, I'm just a normal ghost." He had slowed down enough so that he was flying along beside us. I could tell he was shooting a meaningful glance at Dani.

"You're far from normal, Phantom." I told him. "In fact, you may be the strangest being I have ever met, human or ghost." The school approached and Phantom, surprisingly, landed on the ground. His feet were actually touching the ground, which was a huge feat for a ghost.

I landed and de-suited, letting the red fabric disappear into the watch. Dani made a small sound in complaint when the hover board disappeared, but transformed to human quickly.

"Hey," Phantom leaned down next to her, so that their green eyes met. "Take care of yourself, I might not be around a lot, with all the out-of-town ghost fighting jamborees, like Technus in Japan. He likes it there because of all the tech. Make sure you don't punch any humans that don't deserve it, and you know what I'm talking about."

Then he stood up to regular height, which was just a little taller than me. He leaned forward and whispered in my ear, "Make sure nobody comes after her, ghost or human. She can more than handle herself against jerks like Dash, but gif a ghost comes after her…" he trailed off, leaving the impression of something bad. "She hasn't had a solo ghost fight yet, and though I don't doubt she can take Vlad's vultures and the ectopuses, if Skulker comes around again and I'm not near, I'm worried for her."

He pulled back and I nodded at him. He smiled happily, nodded at both of us, and soared away. As soon as he was out of eyeshot, I heard something drop behind me, but when I turned, nothing was there. Maybe I was getting a little TOO paranoid.

"Did you hear that too?" Dani wondered. Well, there goes that theory.

"I'm sure it was nothing, we're gonna be late," I reassured her. The warning from Phantom was still fresh in my head.

**OH NO! Can you guys review, only if you want. Sorry, I just like reading them. Tell me why you hate it. Or, by the slim, slim chance you actually like it, you can tell me so. I've been going fast on this, but I'm reaching an end. Oops. I got another VERY annoying plot bunny and typed like seventeen pages for it last night. Yikes. I might be posting another story soon. Also, like I said in the note before, Married to Danny is dying and if you want to support her, click on the reviews for this story and a lot of them are hers. Thanks!**


	12. The Paulina Problem

**Haven't updated in forever! *guilty face* Sorry guys, but on the upside, enjoy! I never actually figured out what dropped, but i figured out who dropped it! ENJOY!**

Shocking everybody, Danny was early to first period. He ran out three times, the third time he didn't return until the middle of second period. I, of course, didn't experience this first-hand, but I heard about it, as it was the topic of gossip all throughout the school.

At lunch, Dani and Danny were already together and found me, as apposed to me finding them, as what happened before. Danny had a huge bruise on his arm, which he assured me wasn't as bad as it looked and would be gone tomorrow.

"Where'd you get it?" I wondered. "Dash?"

"Yeah, don't worry about me though. After denting several lockers he's got his rep back and his revenge is paid off. Everything is back to the way it's best." Danny tugged his sleeve harder, causing it to almost completely cover the bruise.

Dani didn't seem concerned at all for her "cousin", which surprised me a lot more than the bruise did. The most shocking thing was, that when we walked into the cafeteria, everybody turned to look at us. Dani and I went to the table with Sam and Tucker while Danny went to get some mush-that-was-known-as-cafeteria-lunch.

He soon came to sit down, right next to Dani. He started to shove the food in his mouth as fast as possible, not stopping to talk or do anything much, and yet he managed to look civilized at the same time. Still, unfortunately, there was an interruption to out small lunchtime chat, which mostly consisted of Sam talking to Tucker about her not-quite-a-date with Devon last night.

Paulina Sanchez, queen of Casper High, got off her mighty throne and slowly walked towards a peasant's table. Unfortunately for me, that table was ours.

"Hey Danny," she said flirtatiously, flipping her hair and batting her eyes while showing the most blinding brilliant smile ever.

Danny did the single most amazing thing ever. He looked up at Casper High's ruling goddess, flirting with him at an almost desperate level, and frowned. "Hey Paulina," he greeted her, mouth turning into a frown. He turned back to his lunch.

Paulina was utterly flabbergasted by this. Still, she persevered. "Danny, do you want to come sit at our table?" she purred.

He turned back to Paulina, frowning fully. I glanced at Sam for just a second and saw her beaming at Danny. Goths don't beam; they hardly smile, so this surprised me. Though, this week was just full of surprises.

Danny stood up to full height, which was taller than Paulina, and full on glared at her. "No, Paulina, I don't. To be frank, I'm really not happy with you right now. You ordered some idiot jock to hurt my younger cousin for no reason at all, so I had to stop him before a little girl punched him. Then, he got mad at me, so he hit me an awful lot this morning, aggravating bruises and cuts I already had and reminding me even more of my last few sleepless nights, which were no fault of my own. Now, you're over here flirting with me just so you can break my heart again once you serve whatever stupidly selfish purpose it is this time. No, I don't really think I want to be on the same planet as you right now, much less the same table. Newsflash, I already have three great friends and one awesome cousin who helped me get over you. Next time you want to flirt with a loser, go for somebody else."

Paulina's mouth fell open as Danny pushed past her and dumped the rest of his lunch in the trash. Then he stormed out of the cafeteria angrily, mumbling something. Everybody was silent before Sam shouted, "HA! TAKE THAT YOU PREP!"

"You-you FREAK!" Paulina screamed at her. "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT! YOU MADE HIM THINK THAT UGLY B**** LIKE YOU ARE BETTER THAN ME!" Humorously, the lunch ladies in the back decided at the exact moment Paulina said a dirty word to accidentally drop all the pots in the back, providing a clatter loud enough to cover her screeching. Everybody still got the point, though.

"Actually," Dani interrupted. "It's all your fault, but nice try."

Paulina turned towards Dani, and did one of the most unsuspected things. She smiled sweetly at Dani. "Hey," she turned to Dash and whispered, "What's her name?"

"I dunno." Dash shrugged, looking helpless.

"Hey sweetie," Paulina tried again. "Sorry for our little misunderstanding earlier, I hope we can be friends."

"What do you want?" Dani asked in a gruff tone. I mentally cheered for her.

Paulina's demeanor changed instantly. "I saw you and Valerie with Phantom this morning. You are going to tell me everything you know about him or I'm going to make your life a living hell," she demanded.

Dani blinked at Paulina once, twice, three times. Then she started laughing, and she laughed for a long, long time. "Y-you, yo-yo-you're going to make MY life a living hell? Darling, I hate to break it to you, but you don't know what a real hell is. Your hell is if your Dad tells you that you can't go to that party. My hell is when I haven't had enough sleep for weeks and that guy on the street corner looks like he's going to do something naughty if I pass out near him."

Dani got a dangerous, almost mournful look in her eye, "But imagine this, everybody in your life except three people either hate you like this or hate you like that. The person you like as more than a friend is trying to kill you, unknowingly, and hangs out with you every day while sometimes talking about what she/he is going to do to your other form. You save people constantly and all you get for it is hate and misunderstanding. You get beat up by everyone and everything in every way shape and form but don't do anything to stop it because if you did you'd make life a tiny bit worse for the people beating on you. Your own parents think you're an irresponsible, troublemaker with no respect for authority and no future this way, and think you're the Satan incarnate the other way. Nobody except the very person you despise most can possibly hope to truly understand what you're going through, and he constantly attacks you and injures you. You have to lie constantly to make sure you don't get captured and vivisected and put through lots of painful, painful experiments. You're constantly in fear, not of your own life being extinguished, but the people around you dying, because you know that without them you'll turn into a monster. You have no idea what you are, but you know that you're not human and if you slip for even a moment the entire world could end. When you can go through all of that and still make jokes and be happy, then I might take you seriously, priss." Dani turned back to her lunch and left almost every single freshman and sophomore of Casper High shaking from the meaning of her words.

I put a hand on her shoulder, but I couldn't help but wonder who had gone through all of that and not ended up in a mental hospital.

**Soooo...that was kinda depressing. That's just how I think Danny's life might go when he's not all jolly and happy and stuff. Stinks right. Sad. Still, the next chapter will hopefully end on a much less depressing note.**


	13. Panic Falls

**I love this chapter, for some reason. Just a little bit of awesomeness on Danny's part. We're getting really close to the lake outing. I'm pretty sure something big is going to happen there. What that big thing is? No clue. If any of you have some big ideas, feel free to tell me. ENJOY!**

When school was over, Dani found me at my locker, dragging a slightly reluctant Danny. "Come on!" she shouted. "I want to get my homework done so I can get my instincts handled!"

I grabbed my backpack out of my locker and slung it over my shoulder. Dani grabbed my hand and dragged me after her. I had to run to keep my feet under me. Danny was simply keeping his feet together and in front of his core, both slowing Dani down and keeping him upright.

When we got to a secluded area Dani transformed just as I suited up. Her hand was still firmly clamped down on Danny's wrist a when she took flight, dragging him into the air with her. Danny didn't protest but instead hung limp from Dani's grasp while she flew wildly around in the general direction of his house. When she was about forty-five feet up, a panicked expression came over his face. I was about to ask why, when he slipped from Dani's grip and fell towards the street below.

Danny didn't scream, and not a person below was looking up to see the black-haired boy falling toward them. I was frozen, staring with wide eyes at the inevitable demise of Danny Fenton. Well, almost inevitable.

Danny put both feet together with his toes pointed to the left, and did a flip in midair. The momentum was just enough to send him slowly off to the left. His feet hit tall building, toes first. Scrunching his body up against the building, Danny waited just long enough while shifting his weight so that his head was below his feet, and then pushed off. The result was a much more controlled dive, and when Danny hit the street, he did several somersaults before popping back up looking as at ease as ever.

"SORRY! DANNY I'M SO SORRY!" Dani screamed as she flew down to meet him. Only then did the pedestrians notice him, not when he was falling to his death, but when what looked like Danny Phantom's little sister came up to him.

"Ah! Ghost!" he shouted, but sounded extremely sarcastic about it. He held his hands up in the air and started to run, flailing the comically. I almost laughed when I saw Dani's incredulous face a second before she went invisible.

Whispers irrupted from the crowd of pedestrians as they began to look up and spotted me floating there. I quickly noted the unwanted attention and forced my locked muscles to MOVE!

Zooming away, I saw a flash of black hair down an alley and quickly flew down there. What I saw was Danny leaning casually against a wall, cracking up. "Hey Val," he greeted me when I landed. "Just wait a second."

"What was that!" a wild Dani exclaimed from beside of me, appearing out of nowhere. She made a mock-scared face and waved her hands in the air.

"That was me keeping up an image," Danny replied casually. "And since I really don't want to fall out of the sky again, can we walk?"

Dani rolled her radioactive green eyes, but nodded and summoned the now-familiar ring of ghostly energy. In a moment Valerie Grey, Danielle Grey, and Danny Fenton were standing in an innocent looking alley. We walked the rest of the way to Danny's house in silence. I don't know what the other two were thinking about, but I was thinking about Danny's moves when he was falling.

How had he done that? I doubt I could have done that, and I was, well, me. The Red Huntress, trained in martial arts, a very good ghost hunter. Danny was sweet, but clumsy. He was scared of ghosts, and was a little naïve and very trusting. He always gave the benefit of the doubt to anyone unless he knew otherwise, he was always kind, and was a hero at heart. But not a hero physically, so how could he have done that?

We reached Danny's house and all thought were wiped from my mind as Danny opened the door and gestured us in. He yelled to his parents that he was home and with us before climbing the stairs up to his room. We managed to finish our homework, even Danny, by 6'o'clock. That was surprising, because normally teachers go hard on you on Friday, but not this one apparently. Danny only got his homework done because he ran out a bare minimum of five times, once after he got an urgent text from Tucker. The time after he came back after he got that text was a while, and Dani convinced me we didn't need to worry and should just keep working, filling Danny in later.

At six, we all went down to the kitchen and Danny got us a healthy snack of non-glowing apples. When I asked about the glowing ones, he responded with a familiar smirk (though I could not place where I'd seen it so many times before). "Yeah, my parents are doing some ecto-food experimentation. Hopefully we don't find any black haired princesses who are hungry for a snack."

I laughed at this, so did Dani, but much quieter. She sent me a meaningful glance, telling me she knew exactly what was going through my head. At that point it was mostly regrets on why I'd dumped him earlier because he was cute and funny and nice and sweet and from what I'd seen he could more than protect himself from ghosts.

"Hey sweetie," I heard a voice from behind me exclaim. "Are these your friends?"

"Yeah," Danny replied, looking nervously between his mom and Dani.

"Well," Maddie Fenton waited for a moment. "Aren't you going to introduce me?"

"Oh, yeah, that's Valerie Grey," he said, motioning to me. "You've seen her before, when the Pariah Dark thing was going on. She's the one I was very nearly dating before, when Dad gave me that weird ring. And the other one that looks like me for absolutely no reason is Danielle Grey, Val's younger adopted sister, whose resemblance to me is completely coincidental." Smooth Danny, I thought.

"Oh, so this is the girl!" Maddie exclaimed, completely ignoring Danny's idiotic comments. He looked a lot more relaxed after that. "Valerie, it seems it's been a little while since those months, but I can still remember Danny telling us all about you!"

"I barely told you she existed, why are you saying I told you about her?" Danny mumbled just loud enough for me to hear.

"Cool." I smiled at Maddie. "Did Danny tell you about how we invited him to the lake tomorrow?"

"No," Maddie sent a pointed look at her son.

Danny blushed and muttered, "I was going to tell you at dinner."

Maddie accepted this, but looked like she was about to say something more when a huge explosion rocked the house. "Maddie, get the Fenton Fire Extinguisher!" I heard Danny's dad yell. Danny's mom leapt into action, leaving us alone in the kitchen.

A moment later, Danny's cell rang. "Hello?" Danny answered. There was a mumbling on the other end before Danny groaned and said, "This is the bazillionth time this week, think I can leave him to somebody else?"

Another mumble from the end of the line, accompanied with a faint "I AM THE BOX GHOST!"

Danny beamed suddenly. "Great idea, Tucker! How long do you think it'll take them?" There was a short reply before Danny laughed slightly and hung up. "Hey Mom and Dad, I just got a call that said there was a ghost in the park!" he called.

"GHOST!" Jack Fenton barreled up the stairs, looking like a very animate, orange, brick wall.

"In the park!" Danny told him excitedly. "Hurry!"

"Come on Mads, I bet it's that troublemaker Phantom!" The Fenton parents were out the door and in their RV in less than ten seconds, barely taking the time to shut the door behind them.

**I love writing Jack, he's like a big teddy bear. Still, sometimes I don't think i get everything about him in the ~~~~~ essence of him (?). I love the little symbol ~, I just love it.**


	14. Training

**So, this is training. The room was funded by Vlad, unknowingly, of course. Just a tidbit, if you were wondering. The room seems a little too perfect, doesn't it. It should, because everything in there is...Wait, i'm telling you too much. Guess you'll just have to find out the long way. FUDGE! I-I mean, ENJOY!**

"Well," Danny laughed as he turned toward us. "That's one way to keep them out of the house. I hope the have fun with him. Come on, Dani, time for training."

"FINALLY!" Dani screamed, and bounced down the lab steps. I hesitated at the door, and Danny noticed.

"Nothing down there is going to bite you," he encouraged. "You're a bad, scary ghost hunter, remember?" he stepped forward and grabbed my hand, tugging on my arm slightly to get me to willingly step down the first step. He quickly released my hand after that, but my hand still tingled where his had touched.

When I finally got down to the Fenton lab, I saw Dani standing in the middle of the lab, an elbow on the table in the center of the room. Danny shot me a devious smile and quietly walked over, flipped a portion of wall, and flicked a switch.

With a swish, the table retracted into the floor, leaving Dani to sprawl over the area where it had been. She scrambled to her feet and glared at Danny. He simply smirked and commanded, "Change." Dani obliged quickly. "Ready?" Danny asked.

"Yeah," she replied, grinning. Danny laughed maniacally and flipped a switch. The table came back up, directly from under Dani, sending her careening into the ceiling. When she landed on the table, Danny flipped the switch again and the table retracted, bringing Dani along for the ride. The floor portion closed over both objects, leaving Dani trapped under the lab's floor.

"HEY!" she shouted from under the floor. "I call a foul!"

"There are no fouls in training," Danny stated cockily.

"Let me out, I hate examination tables!" Dani screamed.

"Lesson one, young grasshopper," Danny intoned in a bad imitation of an old Chinese man's voice. "The Fenton Works lab floor is not intangible, but Danielle Phantom can be."

"Oh, duh!" Dani stated. A moment later there was a loud thunk.

Danny laughed. "Lesson two, the Fenton Works lab floor may or may not be ghost proof, it depends on the one who is controlling it's mood."

"DANNY!" Dani screamed. "LET ME OUT SO I CAN KILL YOU!"

"Hmm…" Danny pretended to contemplate this. "I don't really think I want to do that, since I kinda enjoy living, but fine, okay." Danny hit the switch and the table once again jerked up with a smooth swish.

"You're going down!" Dani yelled, and launched herself at Danny. Danny smiled gleefully and flipped another switch. A clear wall, glowing slightly green, came up between Dani and us. Dani smacked straight into it, sliding down it until her feet touched the floor before peeling her face off it and glaring at Danny.

"You never mess with the Master of the Switches!" Danny yelled triumphantly, making the wall go away. "Believe me, Tucker went a little crazy and it took all day to get him away from it. And this isn't even the fun panel, this is the one my parents know about."

Danny flipped that panel back into the wall and walked over to one of the computers in the lab. He pressed a button behind it and a tiny panel in the about five yards from me flipped open, revealing a number pad. Danny typed something into that, but nothing seemed to happen. He went over to across the room and typed something into a keypad over there. He came back to the keypad near me and typed something else in.

There was a whoosh sound as a tiny panel in the floor opened. Danny walked over to it, looked down, and jumped in. There was a loud clang before Danny shouted, "Come on!"

Dani and I both walked (or floated) over to the opening and looked down. About five feet down was Danny's head, smiling up at us mischievously. "You slow-pokes coming or not?" he asked. Dani floated down easily, but I glanced around for a ladder or something. There was none.

"You have to jump," Danny instructed, as if reading my mind. I had no problem with this, as I had fallen from greater heights before, and did so. Instead of feeling my feet hit the solid ground, I felt strong arms wrap around my waist. For just an instant Danny held me like that before setting me down gently and blushing.

"Sam doesn't like jumping down because she has a problem landing, so she always has me catch her. I'm sorry, I just assumed that you'd want me to do the same," Danny explained.

"It's fine," I promised, blushing slightly. Dani giggled.

"Follow me," Danny instructed. Both of us did so, and Danny led us down a short tunnel before it abruptly stopped with an opening above. He crouched down and locked his fingers together, forming a steady foothold. I got the gist of the action and stepped on his hands, putting all of my weight on them.

Danny suddenly jerked his hands upward with more strength than I though he possessed, forcing me to soar upward and land smoothly on the floor above. He himself jumped up so his hands caught the edge, and pulled himself up. Dani floated up after him, and looked around.

I followed in pursuit, and found to my disbelief that it looked like this mysterious room was a training room. There were two treadmills, two weight machines, two of almost every regular piece of exercise equipment possible to imagine.

"Why is there two of everything?" Dani wondered.

"One ghost version, one human version. The ghost ones are the ones with the green stickers on them," Danny explained. "This is our private training room after Mom and Dad discovered the old ghost training room in the regular lab. And this way we can train Tucker too, and we can train right under their noses. It's soundproof, may or may not be ghost proof, depending on what we want, and virtually undetectable from the outside world. Admit it, you're impressed."

I was indeed impressed, but Danny didn't stop talking. "That's not all. Dani, go to the center of the room. Valerie, come with me." I followed Danny as he walked over to a computer and typed something in. A wall of clear plastic-y stuff surrounded us, and all the exercise equipment retracted into the walls and floor.

Dani floated in the middle of the room, looking ready for anything. An ecto-weapon popped up from nowhere and fired three shots at Dani. Dani turned and shot her own at them, discharging them. While her back was turned, four cardboard cutouts came out from underneath the floor and launched themselves at her. She kicked/punched all of their heads off in three moves. Jazz's smiling cardboard face came back and hit the clear wall before bouncing down to the floor.

"Hey! The Jazz targets are for me to destroy!" Danny yelled.

"Why do you even have Jazz targets?" Dani yelled back. It went on like that for a while, until Dani got exhausted and demanded that we take a break. Danny typed something into the computer and all the exercise equipment came back out. He told me I could practice on whatever I wanted until it was time to go, and I did so very willingly.

**Yeah, yeah, so the joke at the top was cheesy. Be careful or I'll tickle you to death. I can do that, just look at my name. So Danny makes Jazz targets, don't pretend you didn't already know. Maternal Instinct episode, 'member? Yes, you do. Well, I hope you liked it!**


	15. Breakfast and Boats

**It seems like it's been a while, but it hasn't been that long. If anybody has any suggestions I haven't already heard for what should happen, i'm all for it. ENJOY!**

Dani woke me up the next morning, shaking me excitedly over and over. For once in my life, I was actually eager to get up. I quickly located my bag, which Dani and I had packed last night after we left Danny's. I found it next to Dani's, leaning against the bedroom door. Quickly, I changed into my swimsuit, a slim red one-piece, and pulled a shirt and some shorts over it.

Dani emerged in her swimsuit, which was a black and white one-piece I couldn't resist buying for her. Besides, it'd been cheap, and cheap was good.

Dani grabbed her bag and shoved mine into my hands. She bounded out of our bedroom to the dining table, where Dad was eating cereal, dressed up in his fishing gear. I knew he got Friday and Saturday nights off, so he'd probably gotten a good nights sleep last night.

My heart felt like it was about to explode, seeing Dani and Dad together, as a family. And Danny and Phantom were becoming friends to me. it was really nice to be with Danny again, event though I wasn't really with him. Yet.

I checked my watch, and saw 9:30 blinking up at me. Half an hour until Danny cam and we headed out. Then it was a fifteen minute car ride, we'd rent a boat, and get out on the water. I smiled and joined Dad and Dani for breakfast.

Dani seemed to like cereal just fine, and talked excitedly about what she wanted to do at the lake. Dad promised to teach her how to swim if Danny didn't, though he was puzzled in why Dani thought she could learn so fast. Dani reassured him that she was a very fast learner.

At 9:57 their was a knock on the door, and I knew that that had to be Danny. Indeed it was, and he was dressed in swimming trunks and a white muscle shirt, showing off a lot more than his regular baggy clothes at school did. I couldn't help but trace my eyes along his biceps for a moment before looking away. Dani noticed and giggled. I blushed.

At 10:04 we all got into the car, putting Dad and Danny's fishing gear in the back along with out bags and towels and a few plastic bucket's I'd found for a dollar for making sand castles. Sure I was spending money, but Dani was worth it. Plus, I owed Danny. He always slipped in a big tip for me when he ate at the Nasty Burger when I was working.

"So," Danny began. He and I sat in the backseat, with Dani in shotgun and Dad driving.

"So," I returned. We both smiled semi-awkwardly at each other.

Danny turned his attention to the seat in front of him. "So, Dani, you want me to tach you to swim?"

"Yup!" Dani sang. "But I'm pretty sure I'll catch on quick. I mean, I never had to swim because there was always flying, but now I guess I have time to learn."

"It's a lot like flying," Danny told her. 'The same basic anti-gravity stuff, except in water you're a little heavier and the water pushes you around more than wind." I wondered how he knew the anti-gravity stuff, since he's never experienced it before.

"So I should be good at it?" Dani asked, sounding confident.

Danny laughed. "Basically, yes. Though, if you go under go into ghost form immediately and don't breathe. We don't want you to drown."

"No, we don't," Dani hummed. "But hey, guess what?"

"What?' Danny played along.

I couldn't see it, but I'm sure Dani was smiling deviously. "I can't believe you can just take a day off. Last time you were sick, well I heard from Sam that she had to tie you up with the Fenton Fisher."

Danny blushed. "Shut up, Dani," he told her.

"Oh, so it's true then," she giggled again, and Danny slapped his palm against his forehead.

"Note to self," he said, "Make sure Sam doesn't tell Dani anything ever. When did she get the time to tell you?"

"At lunch, when you were gone," Dani replied. I did kinda remember something about that.

"So, why're you taking a break? Especially with Valerie breaking too?" Dani wondered. What was she talking about.

"Dani," Danny had a warning note to his voice, and sent me a nervous look. What wasn't he telling me.

"Fine." Dani sounded like she was pouting. "But I don't realize why you don't just blurt it out. I mean, she's gonna find out sooner or later, and if you tell her then she might not be as angry."

"Tell her what?" Dad asked. I had almost forgotten that he was even in the car.

"A secret she DOES NOT need to know," Danny said, a little harshly. "I'd really prefer if nobody knew."

Dani made a little huffing noise and slouched down in her seat. It seemed like she was disappointed. Danny frowned slightly and leaned forward, whispering something to her.

So there was a secret. I mean, I knew all this time, but still, it was different having it confirmed. I didn't really care what Danny said, I wanted to know.

Dad seemed a little disgruntled, but excepted this. I leaned forward and whispered, "Why do you accept it so quickly?"

"Because, I trust Danny," he replied. "And I'm pretty sure he'll tell us his secret if anybody really gets in danger because of it. I think we're fine."

I leaned back and eyed Danny carefully. he really didn't seem like he was hiding anything bad, but it probably had to do with why he ran out of class all the time and why he ran out of everywhere all the time.

Something occurred to me, and I felt my eyes grow wide from the realization. Why would Vlad clone a regular human like Danny unless Danny's secret had a positive effect on him that would affect the clone positively? Of course. Whatever Danny's secret was, Vlad knew. And apparently, Vlad wanted use of whatever the secret gave Danny.

"Here we are!" Dad announced. "And Danny?"

"Yes?" Danny asked cautiously.

"Let's try to forget about this secret talk," Dad said. Danny smiled widely and nodded. Danielle huffed again. When the both went to unpack stuff, Dad gave me a meaningful glance, mentally scolding me and telling me not to pry. I begrudgingly nodded and went to grab my bag.

We set up near the shore, a nice distance away from the rest of the people. Today was an absolutely gorgeous day, especially for going to the lake. It was just a little too hot to be comfortable, and the water would provide the cooling we needed.

Dad brought out his wallet, but Danny shook his head and pulled out his own. "No, really Mr. Grey, you're housing Dani, it's the least I can do. I insist." After a bit more arguing, Dad reluctantly gave in. He was understanding enough that he knew Danny wasn't going to give up. Both of them could be stubborn, though.

Danny rented us a paddleboat for an hour and a half, though he reassured Dani that if we stayed longer out on the water he'd re-rent it. Dani seemed to completely regain her happy attitude after that. She had been a little grumpy from Danny not telling "her" his secret. I had a feeling "her" was me. More that a feeling.

A boy who looked around eighteen helped us get the paddleboat out on the water. However, he couldn't lift it by himself, so Danny stepped forward.

The boy chuckled. "Seriously, kid, I think I need to call Chelsea or somebody. there's no way you can lift this thing."

Danny smiled back, "Don't underestimate me." He leaned forward and hooked his fingers under the boat. The older boy slouched back slightly, chuckling, like this was going to be a good show. I was about to stop Danny from embarrassing himself when he pulled up.

To my surprise, and the surprise of the older boy, Danny lifted his part of the boat with ease. The older boy's mouth dropped open, and Danny cocked an eyebrow at him. "So, are you going to help me?" Danny wondered "Or are you just going to stand there and catch flies?"

The older boy shook himself out of his trance, and, grumbling, "helped" Danny get the boat to the water. In reality, he just stumbled along behind Danny, barely able to keep the boat off the ground. When they got to the water, Danny dropped the boat into the lake, and the older boy kinda collapsed on himself, dropping his end of the boat in the lake as well.

Danny smirked a very familiar smirk down at him, which I still didn't know where I'd seen so may times not on Danny's face, and said, "Hmm, maybe we did need Chelsea."

Dani giggled and ran down to the boat. She tried to climb in, but Danny grabbed her by her hips and swung her back. "Hey, little ghost girl," he hummed. "Hold your horses. You gotta learn how to swim first."

The older boy finally got up and staggered off, where he went back to renting paddle boats to people. Danny smirked after him for a moment before turning his attention back to Dani.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Ready," Dani confirmed.

"You sure?"

"Positive," Dani replied.

"Really, really, really sure?" he wondered. I saw a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

"Yes!" Dani insisted.

"Okay," Danny smiled, scooped Dani up, and tossed her into the lake, far enough so her feet wouldn't quite touch the bottom even with the momentum of the throw. Then he dove in after here.

"Cold!" Dani shrieked when she surfaced. "Danny," she accused.

"You said you were ready," he teased with an easy smile.

"Not for that!" Dani protested. Her arms were making little circling motions. Dani was treading water. How did she know that?

"If you want me, come get me," Danny teased, drifting just out of her reach.

"Fine," Dani retorted. She moved her arms in controlled movements that resulted in a very messy breaststroke. Danny moved backwards, making sure to always face her, and coaxed her around for a while until she looked like she was swimming just fine. Then Danny allowed him to be caught.

"Ha!" Dani said victoriously. "Caught you!"

"Yep," Danny confirmed, smiling. "And how did you do that? Not walking, not flying, but…"

"Swimming!" Dani shrieked excitedly. "I can swim!"

"Yup," Danny repeated. "And apparently you can also blow out my eardrums." Dani frowned at him and batted him across the head. He just grinned at her, and slid from her grip.

"And now, is Ms. Grey gonna join us in the water, or is she just gonna stand there grinning like a moron?" Danny teased.

"Oh, you'er so getting it so that," I told him.

"You'll have to catch me," he returned.

"Oh, I think I can handle that." I smirked at him and climbed in the boat. "C'mon Dani, we're going on a Danny hunt." Dani giggled and climbed into the boat. Danny just grinned happily at us.

"Danny," Dad called from shore, where he had already cast his line in. "I'd start swimming if I were you!"

Danny glanced back at us. Dani was already in paddling position and I was adjusting my hand on the steering stick. "I'll give you five seconds," I told him.

"That's four more than I'll need," he returned, and then ducked underwater.

**Okay, so I know I keep leaving Daemon out, but hey, now I don't have to worry about it. I bet you're going to ask how Dani can swim automatically. My answer is that, really, I have no idea. My excuse can be instincts or taught knowledge. Unfortunately for me, earlier I mentioned Dani not being able to swim, and now I gotta carry through. there'll probably be like four more chapters or something. Or less. I'm getting tired of postponing and really just want to get to the reveal.**


	16. Overboard

**Okay, so, this is nice. I feel the story pumping me up. I soooooo could NOT resist that little bit in the middle, the fluffy but slow stuff. Sorry. ENJOY!**

Dani and I chased Danny around the lake in the boat for a while. Unfortunately for us, it seemed Danny was a better swimmer that I thought, and our boat had a problem with turning so it either flipped over or turned at a snails pace. Danny took full advantage of this.

We finally caught him when he was teasing us and Dani suddenly jumped out of the boat and used a little flying to get to him before tackling him. I abandoned the boat and jumped in after her, using long, freestyle, strides to get to them.

Then we pulled Danny into the boat with us and Dani started tickling him. I joined her, and Danny started laughing and gasping and trying to get away from us.

"Hey," he protested breathlessly. "Hey! Stop it!"

"No!" Dani yelled gleefully. "But it's annoying that you swim with this muscle shirt. It's much harder to tickle you, and it's sticking to you anyway!" Dani wrapped her hand in the fabric of danny's shirt and turned it intangible, pulling it off.

At the same time, Danny pulled back harshly, trying to get the shirt out of her hands, and fell away from us to the other side of the boat. I just paused, shocked. I was shocked stiff because the moment Dani had gotten the shirt out and off of Danny, I saw how really ripped he was. And I don't mean that disgusting body-builder ripped, or even Dash ripped. I mean really, truly, attractively muscular.

Danny grabbed his shirt back from Dani, who also looked alarmed, pulling it over his head. "Does that answer your question?" he asked, sounding a bit annoyed.

"Dude," Dani said after a little while. "Danny, your like, hot!"

"Gross," Danny protested, making a disgusted face at Dani.

"Shut up," she ordered, a little jokingly. "I'm serious. That's actually really surprising. It's like finding out your older brother is dating your personal idol!"

Danny made a mock-hurt face. "I thought I was your idol."

"That's Val," Dani corrected in a light tone. She was only teasing him, I was sure her idol was Phantom, but still, it made me feel light.

"I'm hurt," Danny teased. Dani giggled.

"Hey, what's that?" she asked suddenly, pointing. Both me and Danny turned, but I didn't see anything. There was a quiet splash from behind us. We both turned a saw Dani immerse from the water's surface, five feet away.

She waved, and began swimming back to shore. Danny looked a little worried, but I lay a hand on his shoulder. "Hey," I reassured him. "The little girl's got ghost powers. She'll be fine.

A couple minutes later we saw Dani climb onto the beach and wave at us before she ran over to where Dad was. Danny chuckled lightly.

"So…" he trailed off awkwardly.

"So…" I mimicked, feeling a blush rise to my cheeks. A couple moments, of comfortable silence passed, and we both just stared at the water. I decided I needed to know.

"The secret…" I started.

Danny tensed. "What secret?" He spoke with a guarded tone.

"You know, the one Dani mentioned in the car?"

Danny made a soft sighing sound. "Val, I really want to tell you." He looked up at me and locked his absolutely beautiful ice-blue eyes in contact with my own eyes. "But I'm not sure if I should."

"Why?" A simple question, just one word, rose from my throat.

"You'll get really mad. I-I'm not sure if I can trust…"

"What?" Again with the one syllable questions.

"I'm not sure if I can trust that you won't hate me if you find out. And I really, really don't want that to happen," Danny muttered, turning away from me and trailing a finger in the water.

"Nothing I can imagine could make me hate you, Danny," I comforted, resting my hand on his.

Danny drew his hand back. "That's just the problem, Val. You would never, ever imagine this. Not in a million years. And I can't stand losing you-" Abruptly, he cut himself off. Still, the unsaid word hung heavy in the air.

"Danny, I could never hate you," I mumbled softly.

"You don't know that," he said. "You can't say that unless you know."

"Then tell me," I pleaded.

"I'm afraid," he whispered.

"What did I do to not make you trust me?" I wondered desperately. My heart was aching now. "Is it from before? I promise, I won't let ghost hunting get in the way of-"

"Valerie," Danny cut me off. "It's none of that. Don't worry. You'll probably find out someday. I just can't tell it to you, I can't say it to your face, I can't even show you, because I wouldn't be able to face that look you'd give me." He locked eyes with me again. "I promise, someday you'll find out, but don't push. Please." The last word had such feeling to it it almost broke my heart in two, but slowly, I nodded.

"Good," He grabbed my chin and tilted it up. "Because it was getting a little tense." I couldn't help but crack a smile at the grin he was giving me. He let got of my chin almost as fast, but it was like I could still feel his there. Oh goodness, i had it bad.

"So…" he mumbled causally.

"So…" I repeated, like times before.

"This again?" Danny wondered, laughing. "Maybe that's our thing."

"Maybe," I replied.

After pregnant pause, Danny snorted a bit in hidden laughter.

"What?" I asked, curiosity building.

"How many Box Ghosts does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" he asked, out of the blue.

There were a few seconds of silence, before laughter violently exploded out of me. Danny joined me, and soon together we were laughing so hard the boat was rocking from side to side, though the joke hadn't been that funny. We were just laughing because it felt good to laugh.

"Anyway," Danny thrummed, once we stopped laughing. "What were we talking-" he was cut off by a sharp gasp, and a barely visible puff of air. It had to be ninety degrees, there was no way I could see his breath.

Immediately, he looked around. I was sure he was going to run off again…except for the fact we were in the middle of a lake. Nowhere to run. Danny got a panicked expression on his face.

"Danny-" I began to say, but before I could get any further, Danny stood up so abruptly he almost upset the boat and made us tip, and then jumped overboard.

I waited for him to surface, and begin to swim to shore, but he didn't come up. I peered over the side of the boat, and saw a quickly dying flash of light deep below. What was he doing?

"Danny?" I called out tentatively, knowing he couldn't here me while he was underwater. Still, I got slightly nervous when there was no reply.

Thirty more seconds passed, and I began to really worry. What if his foot had gotten tangled and he was stuck? He could need my help!

"Danny!" I called out, louder than before. I glanced around the boat to see if there was anything, anything, to help. Nothing at all.

"Danny!" I screamed. It wasn't loud enough for the people on shore to hear, but still pretty loud. It wouldn't get underwater, though.

This was it, I couldn't hold my breath for this long, much less a not that fit, totally average, non ghost hunter kid. And he was telling Dani what to do if she went under.

Danny had told me he was hard to kill when three missiles blew up ON him. Drowning, though, how would he get out of this? This might truly be the end of Danny Fenton.

I couldn't let that happen, so I drew as much air into my lungs as possible, and leaped overboard.

**Cliffhanger! Bam! Please don't hate me TOO much. A big thanks to Yoffi for the drowning idea. Or, well, Val thinking Danny drowned. Fun Fact: You know drowning is supposedly the most painful way to die? Blech. BYE!**


	17. Kiss (FINALLY!)

**Yes, yes, okay. So here's the next chapter. Please don't hate me too much. I know I suck at kiss scenes, don't hate on me.**

After seven minutes of searching underwater, I was completely wiped out, mentally, physically, and emotionally. I was going to kill Danny if he came back as a ghost.

Tears and lake water trickled down my face as I lay on my back in the boat. "Phantom," I growled suddenly. "If you are in anyway even barely associated with this, I'm gonna kick your butt so hard. But please, please, please save Danny. Please."

It didn't really seem real to me, Danny dying, it was like a surreal dream. "Danny, if you come back as a ghost, saying that you might have died, but that's not going to stop you from bugging me, I swear I'll do something very, very rash." I babbled. "And you better not be dead, because then I would have spent seven stupid minutes in freezing cold water for nothing. I swear, Daniel Fenton, if you're dead you're gonna get it. I'll come up to heaven just to deliver a sharp, hard, kick to your ego.

"And if you're alive, well then I'll go even harder on you. You better not me dead, though, because you said it was hard to kill you and for the life of me, I can't imagine what life would be like without you. Also, Sam will probably come murder me with a spoon or something. Tucker will just watch, and then make me a dang cyborg by saving my life with robo-tech just so he and Sam can kill me again."

"Well," that snarky, sarcastic, and yet, amazing voice said. "It's a good thing I'm alive. We don't want any poor, innocent, spoons to get hurt."

I didn't get up. In fact, I didn't really think I could, what with my heart doing the can-can double time like it was.

"Do you really think Tucker could make you a cyborg. I would say no, but I've learned not to doubt that boy."

"Danny," I said in a calm voice, even though I was anything but. "Please, please, just stop talking." Danny was silent for a moment, before leaning over me so his eyes were upside down and his head was right above me, chin pointing the other way.

"Talking is the best way to get it out," he said simply. "I don't have much to get out, so I shouldn't have much to say. Do you?" Instead of answering, I reached a hand up and twined his sopping, wet, raven hair around my fingers.

"Danny?" I mumbled softly.

"Yes?" he asked, sensing the seriousness of my tone.

"If you ever, ever do that again, I swear I'll have a heart attack."

"Well," Danny smiled encouragingly down at me. "We can't have that."

"No," I whispered. "We can't."

Before I could lose my nerve, I reached the other hand up and put it on the back of his neck. Slowly, but not to slowly, I pulled his head down and forward until his lips were level with mine, just a hair's width away. I knew he got the message, and I waited in stunned silence, trying not to get my hopes up.

What felt like several hours passed, and I knew I needed to pull away. I began to drop my hands….And suddenly, warm, but not really warm, lips brushed mine. "Valerie," he whispered softly, just barely loud enough for me to hear.

I pushed my lips forward slightly, touching his again, letting him decide. He pulled away slightly, and whispered, "I have a secret." I knew what he was implying, but I found that I couldn't bring myself feel anything about it.

"I don't care," I whispered back, and waited. Danny hesitated, but pressed his lips against mine again. I barely noticed them slowly turning so they weren't upside down anymore.

"Danny," I whispered, "Don't ever worry me like that again."

Danny chuckled low. "Your wish is my command. As long as you don't kick my butt soooo hard."

"No promises," I said back, giggling. By then, the kiss was completely over, but my lips were tingling like I'd just attacked them with a flame thrower when they were on painkillers.

I found myself looking over at Danny, who was just laying on his back about six inches from me, looking up at the sky.

"So…" I prompted.

"So…" he replied.

"I guess that really is our thing," I joked. Danny grinned softly.

"You know that was my first kiss?" he asked nonchalantly.

"No!" I exclaimed. A painful memory which I really didn't want to see right now came up. "You've kissed Sam."

"For fakeout makeouts, when we don't want to get in trouble. That didn't mean anything, it's like wearing a fake mustache and a hat when you go shopping for bladder medicine because you don't want to get caught doing it as yourself."

"So, your first meaningful kiss, then?"

Danny smiled faintly. "You could say that, but I'd much rather just think of it as my first kiss." There were a couple of minutes in silence. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"What was your first kiss?" Dany wondered, and I smiled when I thought I heard just a hint of jealousy in his tone.

"Well," I began. "It wasn't really romantic, but maybe a little bit, and I was really angry at the boy before it happened."

"Why?" Danny asked. Yes, there was a little bit of envy in his voice.

Time for the kicker. "Because the boy decided to go stupidly jump off a boat, and then almost drown and make me think he was dead, and then the kiss happened."

There was a beat, then, "First, or best?"he asked mockingly. I shoved him off the boat.

After a moment, Danny surfaced, spluttering. "Hey," he accused.

I just smiled and held out a hand to help him up. He eyed me warily, and then grasped the hand. Though, instead of me pulling him up, Danny heaved and I toppled into the water after him.

I surfaced and threw a big wave of water at him. He only grinned at me and returned it with gusto. Afterwards, he and I both climbed up on the boat, exhausted, and lay on our backs, looking up at the sky, until Danny warned me that the hour and a half was almost up.

He started paddling, but when I didn't join, he turned. "Aren't you gonna help?"

I shrugged innocently at him. Sitting up, I braced my foot against his chest and pushed him backwards into the water. When his head popped up, I called, "Race you to shore, ghost boy!"

Danny froze. After a moment, "What?"

"Race you to shore," I repeated. "You know, like see if you can get there before me?"

"Not that," Danny said warily. He seemed paranoid and confused.

"Ghost boy, because this is the second time you've very nearly died on me!"

"Oh," was choked out. He forced out a laugh. "Funny."

"What-" I started.

"Race you!" Danny blurted out, and began swimming for shore before I could get another word out. That was definitely part of this mysterious secret. The secret I wasn't allowed to know, because he wouldn't tell me. Couldn't tell me.

I complied, for now, with Danny's wishes and secret keeping. Pumping my legs hard, I managed to catch up with him, and remained about a meter behind him until we hit the bay. I slowed down and helped Danny pull the boat up onto the shore.

With sudden clarity, I remembered what those muscles, his muscles, had looked like when Dani had phased of his shirt. He could probably lift this boat by himself.

I dropped the boat in shock at the thought, but Danny continued to pull it, with almost no hinderance. He didn't seem to notice I had dropped it. I blushed slightly and picked the boat back up. I could at least try to be helpful.

Once Danny and I got the boat up on shore a flipped over, Dani sidled over to us. "Hey," she greeted. "Anything interesting happen after I swam away?" I glanced at Danny, and we once again locked eyes. His head shook a barely visible 'no'.

"Nah," I replied. "Except we had an awesome splash fight which I TOTALLY WON!"

"No!" Danny argued. "I was most certainly," he winked, "note the vocabulary," I rolled my eyes at him, "The Victor of the Splash Fight."

"In your dreams," I countered.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" he bantered, smirking that smirk that was so darn familiar but I couldn't place it yet. Jeez, where have I seen that before?

"Nothing at all?" Dani asked, sounding disappointed. "Really? But I even left you guys alone for, like, ever!"

Danny and I shared a look, before, "What exactly did you expect to happen?"

"Something more than just a splash fight!" Dani complained wildly.

"If it makes you feel any better," Danny consoled her. "It was a very romantic splash fight."

**A very, very, very romantic splash fight. HASTA LA VISTA!**


	18. To lazy to come up with something clever

**Hmmmm...now I just postponing the inevitable, but I didn't want it to happen today. On Monday it will happen! Or tuesday! Or Wednesday! I'm trying not to skip any days in The Great Dani Development, which I have so lovingly nick-named this story, but I have no ideas for Sunday! Anybody out there?**

**In other news, I seriously hate the world outside of fanfiction, because (and no, I refuse to be subtle!) I just got my period! YAY! *Sarcasm(for the yay)* Jeez, Oh how I despise it. If I seem crabby and mean in my author's notes or author's rants, which I tend to do, feel free to tell me I need to lighten up, and you know, you could review so I don't feel like I hate the world. ENJOY!**

"Ha! Done!" both Dani and Danny exclaimed together. I added the finishing touches to my own and sat back.

"Daemon!" Dani hollered. "You wanna come judge our sandcastles?" I could hear Dad chuckle, and he began to walk over.

"Hurry," Dani pleaded. "Mine is falling apart!"

"Ha!" Danny barked. "That's what happens when you rush. Mine is staying!"

"Be quiet," Dani ordered. Danny laughed.

Dad reached us and overlooked our sandcastles. Dani's was the biggest, but one of her turrets had already fallen, and two more were beginning to crumble. Danny's was a little bigger than mine, and basically looked like the Taj-Mahal. Mine was the smallest, but I thought it retained a lot of detail.

Dad considered for a moment before deciding. "Danny wins," he decreed.

"Yes!" both Danny and Dani cheered, pumping their fists. They looked at each other. "He means me!" they exclaimed unanimously, staring the other down.

Dad chuckled at the sight, sharing a look with me, before clarifying. "I mean older Danny."

"What!" Dani complained.

"He did an actual castle," Dad pointed out. "And it does look surprisingly like it's older copy."

"Yes," Danny leaped up. "Ha!"

"Plus," Dad added. "I can't play favorites between my daughters. I had to choose neutral ground."

"Ha!" Dani shot back at Danny. Danny stuck his tongue out at her, and she picked up and handful of sand and tried to get it in his mouth. Danny quickly redrew his tongue and pressed his lips together. Dani dropped the sand.

Getting a weird look on her face, she reached out and tapped Danny on the arm. Dani kicked off from the beach, changing forms, and hovering just out of reach. "Tag! You're it!" she screamed, flying away.

I glanced around nervously, but there was nobody who could really see us beyond being blobs, and they would probably think Dani was a kite or something. I felt a quick tap on my arm, and turned to see Danny running in the other direction, cackling like a madman. "You're it!" he threw over his shoulder.

"Oh, it is on!" I hollered, chasing after him. Danny was a faster runner than I had first thought, and I ended up near Dani, who was hovering in the air just above the point I could get at by jumping with my hands extended.

"Can't get me from down there," Dani teased.

I huffed, and got a strange idea. She was using her ghost powers, why couldn't I use my suit. I slammed my heels together and the hover board formed. I tagged Dani on the arm and flew away, letting the rest of the suit grow over me.

Dani giggled and took off after me, and we tagged each other over and over. I almost forgot about Danny, but when Dani dived down and got him on the arm, I remembered.

"Is this another dumb way of trying to get me to tell her?" Danny asked Dani. Dani nodded at him, giggling. Why did this dang secret keep coming up.

"No," Danny said stubbornly, crossing his arms.

"Oh, come on!" Dani begged, floating down to look him in the eye. Quicker than I could detect, Danny reached out and tapped Dani on the arm. "You're it!" he exclaimed, darting off.

"I give up!" Dani screamed in annoyance, then coming after me. I flew away quickly.

Dani played with the radio when we drove back, finally landing on a station that was playing some kind of weird techno music. Danny started humming along with it, though listening to him, it was evident he'd never heard it before.

It was actually kind of cool to it, and halfway through the car ride, Dani started head banging. After a few minutes of that she stopped, putting a hand to her forehead. "Never headband," she muttered, "It makes you soooooooooo dizzy." Danny and I laughed.

When we got home, it was around five, and Danny said goodbye to each of us. He shook Dad's hand, kissed Dani's forehead, and, surprising me completely, kissed me on the cheek.

"See you on Monday," he whispered, though it had to be a little louder than a normal whisper due to the fact Dani was giggling like a little devil because he had kissed me on the cheek.

Danny turned and began to walk down the street, but threw once last wave at each of us over his shoulder before turning into an alley and vanishing. Only one problem, that alley was a dead end and none the less led AWAY from FentonWorks. I waited to see him come back, realizing he'd taken a wrong turn, but he never did. Huh?

I shrugged to myself and turned to follow Dani and Dad back inside, both who were smiling slightly. Dad because he trusted Danny, though he'd probably be mad if he hurt me, and Dani because…because she'd left us alone on the paddle boat wanting what had happened to happen. Though I doubt she anticipated the almost drowning part of the deal.

While I was turning, something white caught my eye. I did a double take and saw Phantom soaring over the city, a happy smile on his face.

"Dad," I caught his attention. "I'm gonna go flying."

"Be back soon," he told me.

"Want me to come with?" Dani wondered.

I thought about what I wanted to do. "No, this is something I need to do alone."

Dani shrugged, and followed my eyes to Phantom. "Okay," she said, just a little too willingly. I clapped my feet together and took off after Phantom, barely hearing Dani laughing from below.

"Hey Phantom!" I yelled, when I was in range.

He froze in the air, turning to see me. "Yes?"

"I-" I swallowed my pride. "I'm sorry for blaming you for the thing with the ghost dog."

"It's fine," he said, so casually I almost missed it.

"No, really, I mean it." I had been expecting him to stretch this.

"Yeah," he waved a hand. "Already been forgiven."

"How can you forgive me so easily," I asked. It was almost like I wanted him to be mad at me. "I tried to destroy you, wipe you into oblivion."

"Well," Phantom winked. "When you put it like that, it sounds like I should be angry."

"You should!" I yelled. "You're not just supposed to be okay with it."

Phantom shrugged, a helpless look on his face, like "what can you do". "Hey, I'm fine with it. I wasn't very angry at you to begin with, and when you saved Dani I kind of felt like I owed you. Consider this me paying you back. Just, please, don't come after me with guns blazing without asking my side of the story next time."

"Okay," I agreed. "Do you want to fly around with me?"

"Sorry," Phantom apologized. "I've kinda got plans."

"You've got plans," I repeated blankly.

"Hey!" he protested. "Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I can't have a life." Then he paused, a puzzled look on his face. 'Wait, that didn't make any sense."

"I catch your drift," I reassured him. "Go do whatever these 'plans' entitle. I'll take care of Amity alone."

"Over my dead body!" Phantom exclaimed wildly.

"With pleasure," I replied. His face returned to looking puzzled, and then he shot me a glare.

"You win this round, with your superior wit and confusing me, but I will return!" he exclaimed dramatically, before flying off. I watched him fly off, a small smile on has face, and decided maybe he wasn't that bad. My life finally seemed like it was looking up.

**Yes, so maybe that last line is a little lame, but I could not for the life of me think of anything else and I know this chapter was just a little bit of a filler and I might just skip Sunday if I don't come up with something good, but I promise something exciting will happen soon. BYE-BYE!**


	19. Coke

**FINALLY! Maybe, one/two chapters after this, and then I'm done with this! Yes! You don't know how much I've come to hate, despise, and dislike this story, as well as how much a passionately love it. I know it's not the best story, but it'll be my first finished story that's not a oneshot. I'm oddly proud of myself. HERE, ENJOY!**

On Monday, both Dani and I woke with sleepy eyes. We'd stayed up on Sunday night when I had gotten out the old deck of cards and we'd played until Dad had to leave for work. Dani and I had continued playing a game of war after that, that had stretched until past midnight. Dani had refused to give up until she either one or lost.

Sleepily, I poured us both bowls of cereal, and ate mine tiredly, while still managing to gobble it down quickly. Dani was chewing sleepily and only got three-fourths of her bowl down. I dumped the remainder in the garbage and put our dishes int he sink before dragging Dani's sleepy body to the alley to transform.

She yawned widely as the ring formed and split, making me yawn in response. I clapped my feet together and took to the sky.

Halfway there, we saw Phantom sucking the Box Ghost into the thermos. he turned to us and smiled, before frowning. "Why're you two so tired?" he wondered.

"Stayed up late," Dani replied. Phantom's frown deepened. He looked like he wanted to say something, but Dani continued on. "Now I understand why you're always so mopey. You never get enough sleep because of the ghosts, do you?"

"I'm not mopey!" Phantom protested.

"Definitely not mopey," I mumbled. Phantom shot me a playful glare.

"Unenergized," Dani substituted. Phantom frowned a bit at that, but didn't say anything.

"Get to school," he ordered. "I've got to drain the thermos, but I'll make sure you make it there alright." Dani nodded with floppy head movements. Phantom smiled a bit at her. "I'll pick you both up a Coke, okay?"

"Thanks, Danny," Dani slurred sleepily.. Phantom smiled slightly and flew off, waving over his shoulder. His green eyes locked on mine for a moment, and a tiny smiled graced his lips. He smirked at me in that annoying way he always did, and corkscrewed off, showing his energized state. I scowled after him, yet I wasn't really that annoyed. That much.

I flew after Danielle to school, where I let the suit retract. I was used to sleepless nights, but today was different. Today I just felt really, really tired. Much more tired than normal. Must have been the wether, which had turned gray and gloomy since Saturday.

I sighed as I spotted traces of lightning in the clouds and soon after heard the boom of thunder. The wind was blowing softly, but beginning to build, and the scent of fresh rain was amidst it all.

"Come on, Dani, let's get inside," I instructed, having to raise my voice to make sure she heard me.

"Okay," she yelled back, and followed me into the building.

The school was a bustle of raincoats and umbrellas, as almost everybody except us had noticed the bad weather conditions. I'd been to busy coaxing an almost dead Dani awake, no pun intended.

I parted ways with Dani, moving on to the Sophomore hallway. I got to my locker my shoving myself between people when asking them to move didn't work. It often didn't. I retrieved my books from my locker and closed the door, about to move onto class, when...

"There you are!" I heard Paulina's snarky voice exclaim. "I don't know why Phantom ever took an interest in you and your freak of a sister, but you're gonna tell me."

I pivoted on my heel, as if sensing the danger, and saw Paulina, alined with several other popular girls that WEREN'T STAR! Star was normally my support system against Paulina, softening the blows and getting the vicious popular girl to ignore me, but now I didn't have her help. No Star, no Danny or Dani, and no escape.

"Hey Paulina," I ventured, treading carefully.

"You're stupid little sister isn't here to protect you, and I want answers, Grey. And I intend to get them, one way or another." Paulina's eyes had a dangerous glint to them, boarding on obsession. It scared me.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I bluffed. Paulina somehow saw right through it, and I found myself, for the first time, actually scared of another regular teenager. Scared of preppy princess Paulina.

"Oh course you do," Paulina sang, and her group of girls circled more tightly around me. Some people were stopping in the halls to watch the spectacle.

"You're gonna tell me every single thing you know about Phantom, and get him to love me, or else," she chirped.

"I don't really know Phantom that well." It wasn't completely a lie, but I did know him better than even she would expect. "I don't even know his favorite color." I didn't put I knew that one of his favorite people was Dani, he thought being a gas was cool, and he like the stars. He loved astronomy, and he hated toast. Wow, Dani had gotten me closer to Phantom than I thought.

"You know enough to tell me something," Paulina hissed, eyes narrowing. "And I'm not letting you go until you tell me everything."

"I-" I began, but was cut of by a shout several feet away.

"Watch it, Fenturd!" Dash's voice exclaimed, and there was a small yelp. I turned just in time to see Danny be pushed by Dash, and let go of something. Something red and shiny.

The Coke can revolved in the air several times before landing on the ground about a foot from Paulina's designer flats. Everything seemed to travel in slow motion as the can ruptured and the fizzy liquid sprayed everywhere, including all over Paulina's outfit. Paulina's overly made-up face turned to dismay.

She wheeled on Danny, who was pushing himself off the floor and investigating his soaked shirt. "YOU FREAK!" She shrieked. "You'll pay for this. My shoes, and my hair, and my DRY CLEANING! How can you even stand yourself, you disgusting LOSER!"

Danny's eyes narrowed at the loser comment, but he remained silent, letting Paulina go on with her rant. It was evident only to me that Paulina had struck a nerve, even though it might not be a sore one.

"This is all your fault! Why don't you just go crawl into a hole and vanish. Nobody wants you here anyway. All the teachers hate you because you never show up for class, as IF you had something better to do. Just leave, you little freak!" Paulina finally finished, leaving everybody int he hallway in shocked silence. It wasn't the first time she'd blown up at somebody, and not the first time she'd told somebody to commit suicide, but it was shocking all the same. I felt hot, boiling anger stir inside of me.

Danny stood there calmly, a small frown present on his features. "You know, Paulina, you'd said I'd pay, but I'm flat broke. This is because I don't have time for a job, don't have time for my chores, don't have time for school, and certainly don't have time for your insults. I'm fine without them, thanks, and I'd really prefer if you don't call me a loser." Danny walked around her, giving her a wide birth, and began to make his way to me. In his right hand, he held another Coke.

"Here." He held it out to me. "You look sleepy."

"Not anymore," I replied. "That was amazing."

"Oh?" he feigned interest. "How amazing?"

I shot Paulina a look, just to tell her that I liked Danny being here, and she should eat her words now before I choke her with them, before leaning over and pecking him on the lips. "Amazing enough to deserve that, and maybe if you get Dani an new Coke, I'll give you another kiss."

"I guess I better find a vending machine." He smiled brightly at me, and took my books that I was struggling to balance while opening the Coke. I popped the tab and took a long sip of the dark soda. Danny was holding my books away from him and his shirt dripping on Coke. I laughed and grabbed my books.

"Go get a new shirt," I instructed. He saluted and meandered off, but not before throwing a wink over his shoulder. He had managed to herd me away format he crowd of shocked bystanders, who now no doubt thought me and danny were an item. Were we? I had to admit, I didn't have a problem with that, but did he think so? I sighed and slipped into first period.

Danny was leaning on the wall of lockers outside my third period when I got out, waiting for me. I smiled a him, and he returned the gesture. "I got Danielle that Coke," he bragged.

I laughed, and people nearby shot us glances and began whispering. I saw Paulina down the hall, wearing a whole new outfit. Her pink crop-top sported the danny Phantom logo, and I winced mentally for him.

"So, this weekend was fun, Val," Danny started. "Maybe next time we can g get ice-cream or something."

"Does Dani like ice cream," I wondered, not knowing if he would know or not.

"I do," Danny responded. "I don't see why she wouldn't, unless she had a horrible experience with ice cream or something."

"Or if Phantom hates it," I added.

Danny frowned slightly. "Actually Val, there's something I wanted to tell you."

"Yeah?"

"I'm actually really nervous about this, and I'm not sure about this. Maybe I should tell you-" A gasp and slightly blue air came out of Danny's mouth, cutting him off.

"Uhh…" he stared at me, unsure.

"Go, and tell me later," I ordered. "And it better be worth waiting for."

"It will be," he assured me, backing away. He sent one last blindingly brilliant smile at me before running off. There was a small tapping sound, and I saw, to my surprise, Danny's phone on the ground. He must have dropped it.

"Danny, wait, you dropped your phone!" I yelled after him, but he didn't seem to hear me, and was already maneuvering his way expertly through the school crowd. Whatever he went away for couldn't be that bad that I couldn't give him his phone before he went at it, right? I ran after him.

Just before I reached him, he threw himself in the janitor's closet. What? That was strange?

I flung open the door. "Danny, yo-ACK!" My thraot immediately closed up when I saw what I did, making me make a choking sound. Danny had his fists in the air, a ring of bright light around him, a guilty and panicked expression on his face.

There was only one thought passing through my head. I had finally figured out where I'd seen that stupid, annoying, know-it all smirk before.

**It finally happened, she finally learned. Well, she learned that he was a halfa from that ring, but Phantom because she knows enough, and, you know, it was a little obvious at that point. UNTIL NEXT TIME!**


	20. End

**So, I guess this is the end. Farewell, all. Second to last chapter, but the end of The Great Dani development. Epilogue is up next, maybe tomorrow. I know this is short, but it's a finisher, and Val may seem a little OOC, but hey, creative license.**

Danny was leaning on the wall of lockers outside my third period when I got out, waiting for me. I smiled a him, and he returned the gesture. "I got Danielle that Coke," he bragged.

I laughed, and people nearby shot us glances and began whispering. I saw Paulina down the hall, wearing a whole new outfit. Her pink crop-top sported the danny Phantom logo, and I winced mentally for him.

"So, this weekend was fun, Val," Danny started. "Maybe next time we can g get ice-cream or something."

"Does Dani like ice cream," I wondered, not knowing if he would know or not.

"I do," Danny responded. "I don't see why she wouldn't, unless she had a horrible experience with ice cream or something."

"Or if Phantom hates it," I added.

Danny frowned slightly. "Actually Val, there's something I wanted to tell you."

"Yeah?"

"I'm actually really nervous about this, and I'm not sure about this. Maybe I should tell you-" A gasp and slightly blue air came out of Danny's mouth, cutting him off.

"Uhh…" he stared at me, unsure.

"Go, and tell me later," I ordered. "And it better be worth waiting for."

"It will be," he assured me, backing away. He sent one last blindingly brilliant smile at me before running off. There was a small tapping sound, and I saw, to my surprise, Danny's phone on the ground. He must have dropped it.

"Danny, wait, you dropped your phone!" I yelled after him, but he didn't seem to hear me, and was already maneuvering his way expertly through the school crowd. Whatever he went away for couldn't be that bad that I couldn't give him his phone before he went at it, right? I ran after him.

Just before I reached him, he threw himself in the janitor's closet. What? That was strange?

I flung open the door. "Danny, yo-ACK!" My throat immediately closed up when I saw what I did, making me make a choking sound. Danny had his fists in the air, a ring of bright light around him, a guilty and panicked expression on his face.

There was only one thought passing through my head. I had finally figured out where I'd seen that stupid, annoying, know-it all smirk before.

"Phantom," I whispered quietly, and Danny's eyes widened. The ring began moving up and own, and Danny gave me a regretful glance. It was then the ring reached his chest, and the Danny Phantom lode could be clearly seen.

"I'm sorry," Danny murmured, casting his head down, showing me a headful of currently white hair. His body glowed slightly, in spectral luminescence. His head hung limp, in shame, expecting me to snap out at him.

I'd hardly noticed when the door closed behind me, but apparently it did, because suddenly I found myself falling back onto it and collapsing tot he floor, my head reeling. I could barely see Danny's now-green eyes glowing, half closed in sorrow. His mouth hung open, and that blue breath of air escaped again.

"I'm so sorry," he mumbled again, regret resonating through his echoey tone. His eyes blinked rapidly, maybe with forming tears, and he turned intangible and flew out of the closet. I stared after him, my mind traveling at the speed of light, trying to comprehend this. It had all clicked into place when I saw that ring.

The halfa ring, the ring that pushed half-ghost half-humans from one form to another. I'd seen Vlad's, I'd seen Dani's, and now I'd seen Danny's. I'd thought, at first, that Danny couldn't be a half, because then Danielle would be three fourths ghost, and then it had clicked. Hair, eyes, voice, smirk, laugh, name, connections, body shape, knowledge, thermos, attitude, they were all the same. And not to mention the fact that Danny was never where Phantom was. And the worst part was, I think I still had a crush on him.

Danny was Phantom. Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom. That ghost I'd chased, tried to obligate, was my crush. I'd tried to save Danny from himself. Both Danny's involved in Dani's life were the same person.

Wow, this makes things a lot easier. I felt guilty for that thought immediately, but I had to begrudgingly admit that it was true. It also explained why Danny could be in potentially dangerous situations for normal humans, like, for example, being blown up by missiles, and survive through it easily. It also explained why Danny ran off all the time.

I stood up, using the wall only two times, which was a great feat, considering. I grabbed Danny's cell phone and my books, which I had dropped, and opened the closet door. Fewer people were in the hallway than before, the difference was big enough for me to know I was almost late. I sighed, knowing that my forth period teacher was very unlucky to get me after I'd learned, and headed off to my next class.

I was right in one thing, I couldn't pay attention at all in forth period. My tiredness had worn off, partially due to the Coke and partially due to the revelation I'd just witnessed. When Danny said he wanted to tell me something, I'd had no idea it could be anything like this.

When the bell finally rung, it took Lester shaking my shoulder and asking me if I needed medical assistance to get me to move.

"N-no. I j-just need some food. Thanks." I gave him a smile which he returned before walking away. I got up out of my seat and walked in a slight daze to my locker, thoughts banging around inside my head.

I dropped my books in my locker, not even bothering to organize them or shove the ones I'd need later for homework in my backpack like I normally do. I think I had a pretty good reason. When I closed my locker, I saw Danny standing there awkwardly, giving me a nervous glance, looking sad.

"So…" he murmured.

"So…" I echoed. Our thing, alright, even in awkward moments.

After a few minutes, I couldn't handle it anymore. "Danny, I'm so sorry I ever hunted you and I've seen all the good that you do and I'm so sorry please forgive me."

Danny snorted, like this was all some psychopath's idea of a grand joke. "Forgiveness, I could ask the same of you."

"Why, everything, all the tension between us, is my fault. I hunted you, I broke up with you so I could hunt you, I've shot and accused you, I-"

"Stop there," Danny interrupted. "You didn't know, and I did kind of ruin your life. I kept the secret from you." Oh, so he thought everything was his fault and I thought everything was my fault.

"Danny, I think at this point we only have one thing left to do." He looked up, curiosity evident in his eyes. "Thank the little miracle worker that started this all."

Danny smiled. "So," Danny began.

"So," I joked. He grinned.

"So I was wondering if maybe you wanted to learn about the Ghost Zone anytime soon.," he continued.

"If that's your way of asking me out on a date, yes." Danny's grin broadened. "And maybe there are some romantic spots in that swirling wasteland half of you calls home."

"I could name a few," Danny said mysteriously. "Now I've got to go find Dani and attack her with hugs."

"Save some for your girlfriend," I told him, kissing his cheek, and then walking towards the lunchroom. Sure, this was going to be hard to adjust to, but I had help.


End file.
